Embedded

Becky Worledge of the Qt Company (@qtproject) spoke with us about application frameworks, organizing large code bases, and automotive regulations. The best place to get started with Qt is the getting started page: doc.qt.io/qt-5/gettingstarted.html  Or skip that and head straight for the code: github.com/qt Maybe backtrack to see what is available: qt.io/product/features Hmm, was there talk of Qt and Python? PySide was it? qt.io/qt-for-python But wait, Qt for MCU? What platforms are supported? QtForMCUs/qtul-supported-platforms.html Finally, don’t get eaten by a Grue, sense when they are coming: doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtsensors-grue-example.html Qt6 is coming out Dec 2020. So maybe replace all the qt-5 in the links with qt-6 to see if it is ready yet! Oh, and Qt is hiring: qt.io/careers The quote at the end is not from Abraham Lincoln. (Quote Investigator). Still a good thought.

Seth Hillbrand (@SethHillbrand), lead developer for KiCAD (@kicad_pcb), spoke with us about open source development, EDA tools, pronunciation, and inclusion. Check out KiCAD! Seth’s company provides support for KiCAD (kipro-pcb.com, @kiproeda).  

John McMaster (@johndmcmaster) told us about the process of opening up chips to see how the processors are structured and what the firmware says.  See John’s website for information on getting started (as well as digging much deeper). John has given some interesting Hardwear.io talks including Capturing Mask ROMs and Taming Hydrofluoric Acid to Extract Firmware. His talks and many others are available on the Hardwear.io archive. Or sign up for the Hardwear.io Online Hardware Security Training, Berlin Jan 2021. As mentioned in the show: John wrote a blog post about his top lab accidents and explosions. Paper: Reverse engineering Flash EEPROM memories using Scanning Electron Microscopy by Franck Courbon, Sergei Skorobogatov, and Christopher Woods Rompar and bitract are the two programs mentioned as helpful for getting from an image to binary code.

Chris and Elecia discuss transcripts, lightsabers, seashells, python, numpy, matlab and how to get into embedded systems development. Embedded show transcripts are available at embedded.fm/transcripts  Elecia’s origami github repository includes a python script for generating origami shell folding patterns. The paper described was Analysis of Shell Coiling: General Problems by David M. Raup from the Journal of Paleontology , Sep., 1966, Vol. 40, No. 5. Chris used this model to print his lightsaber: Star Wars Lightsaber (Normal version) from YouMagine The episode was sponsored by Triplebyte. If you are looking to prove your skills, develop your knowledge, or find a job you love, check out Triplebyte.

Ben Hencke (@ledmage, @im889) updated us on blinking lights and running a small hardware business. You can find the current PixelBlaze in the Electomage store on Tindie (tindie.com/stores/electromage/) or signup for a shiny new version on CrowdSupply. Ben’s personal site (bhencke.com) has lots of projects including a page devoted to the awesome Pixelblaze projects (including the BioTronEsis alien light sea creatures which someone who hosts this show hopes will be in her Christmas stocking). When Ben is making Pixelblaze, the brand is ElectroMage (electromage.com/) so you can see more about Pixelblaze there including the forum. We didn’t talk about TapGlo, the arcade ping pong table that Ben is also working on. Favorite solder paste: LOCTITE GC 10 paste (henkel-adhesives) About his favorite acronym, Ben says, “XMLHttpRequest is my favorite because it perfectly illustrates how we're (developers) bad at naming things and like to come up with arbitrary rules for things. The story about how XML is all caps and Html is camel case is just too perfect, and it's popular use rarely has anything to do with XML” Finally, There are 40 different flavors of Kit Kat. There are 12 flavors of candy corn, they all taste the same.

Christine Sunu (@christinesunu) spoke with us about the feelings we get from robots. For more information about emotive design, check out Christine’s website: christinesunu.com. From there you can find hackpretty.com, some of her talks (including the TED talk with the Fur Worm), and links to her projects (such as Starfish Cat and a Cartoon Guide to the Internet of Things). You can find more of her writing and videos on BuzzFeed and The Verge. You can also hire her product development company Flash Bang. Embedded 142: New and Improved Appendages is where Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick us. Keepon Robot (or on Wikipedia) Books we talked about: Accelerando by Charles Stross Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle (MIT site) Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Note: Elecia also wrote a whole octopus annotated bibliography in a recent post)

Drew Fustini (@pdp7) spoke with us about building Linux, RISC-V cores, and many other things. Links, so many links! Drew is a board member of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA.org). He is an open source hardware designer at OSHPark (he recommends their blog!). He writes a monthly column for Hackspace Magazine, for example The Rise of the FPGA in Issue 26 and  Intro to RISC-V.  Yocto is a tool to help build a Linux distribution specific to your board and application! Bootlin offers free training material for Yocto and OpenEmbedded (as well as many other things such as Embedded Linux and Linux kernel development). Or there is a video: Buildroot vs Yocto: Differences for Your Daily Job - Luca Ceresoli at Embedded Linux Conference. Or look at Embedded Apprentice Linux Engineer (e-ale.org). Or maybe another video: “Yocto Project Dev Day Virtual 2020 #3: Yocto Project Kernel Lab, Hands-On, Part 1” by Trevor Woerner. RISC-V is an open source processor core. Well, cores. But you can try them out in hardware even if you don’t want to play with an FPGA. The SiSpeed Longan Nano has a GigaDevices microcontroller dev board (with an OLED on board!, more info). Did you know you can run Linux on RISC-V? The cheapest method is emulation and Renode is brilliant for that. Here is Drew using it on the train (twitter). Sipeed boards with Kendryte K210 start at only $13 and can even run Linux (tutorial). There are also affordable open hardware FPGA with free software toolchain support like the ICE40 based Icebreaker and Fomu. For a bit more money, the bigger ECP5 can run Linux. Or look at Greg Davill’s wonderful Orange Crab. For a lot more money but on silicon, the Icicle with Microchip PolarFire SoC is aimed at corporate use. Or you can produce your own physical chips. For free (for a limited time). See the talk from Tim Ansell - Skywater PDK: Fully open source manufacturable PDK for a 130nm process Drew attends a lot of conferences, here are highlights from the past: OHS 2020 wrist badge  OHS 2018 epaper badge  ELC-2018 EALE Buildroot - Thomas Petazzoni  ELC-2018 EALE Bitbake YP - Behan Webster Linux on RISC-V with open hardware and open FPGA tools Sldies for Embedded Linux Conference Video from FOSS North Linaro Connect BoF: gpio and pinctrl in Linux kernel (Slides) RISC-V: How an open ISA benefits hardware security (Slides) (Hardwear.io video)   Here are some future conferences he’s planning to attend: Embedded Linux Conference Europe ($50) October 26-29, 2020 (Virtual) Yocto Project Virtual Summit ($40) October 29-30, 2020 (Virtual) Open Hardware Summit March 13, 2020

Whitney Huang of Zipline (@zipline) spoke with us about drone delivery of medical products: technology, operations, and applications. For more information about Zipline, check out flyzipline.com. Also, Zipline is hiring for positions in San Francisco, CA, USA, North America and Ghana, Africa. Tacocopter was a thing in 2011. (Ok, not a very serious thing but still.)

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) discuss API design and team dynamics. Elecia’s book: Making Embedded Systems Embedded Patreon StewMac (Ukulele kits) Transcript: embedded.fm/transcripts/347

Sophy Wong (@sophywong) creates projects she can wear and writes about them so others can make them as well. We talked about fashion, design, inspiration, and motivation. Sophy’s website is sophywong.com. We spoke about her book, Wearable Tech Projects. Check out her projects on Adafruit, Hackspace Magazine and Make Magazine. She also did a video interview with Tested. Sophy’s space suit was used in Saul’s King of Misery music video. Sophy has found inspiration in Debby Millman’s podcast Design Matters, Diana Eng’s Fashion Geek: Clothes Accessories Tech, and the work of Sagmeister. Transcript: embedded.fm/transcripts/346