Embedded

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

Gretchen Walker gave advice on creating a BLE iOS application. Gretchen wrote The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Core Bluetooth on the PunchThrough (@PunchThrough) blog. There are many other good posts on the blog about BLE from a device perspective and app development (iOS and Android). PunchThrough also makes LightBlue, a great BLE debugging app you can find wherever you find your mobile apps.  PunchThrough is hiring embedded software engineers in the Minneapolis, MN area.  Chris and Gretchen both recommend Ray Wenderlich’s site for learning about Swift. Chris also liked the Big Nerd Ranch books: iOS Programming and Swift Programming.  Elecia liked the NovelBits.io writeup about getting maximum throughput on BLE. Apple Accessory Design Guide

Ben Hencke (@im889) spoke with us about OHWS, Tindie, and blinking lights. Ben sells his Pixelblaze WiFi LED controller on his ElectroMage store on Tindie. It is based on the ESP8266 and uses the DotStar (APA102) lights. To hear John Leeman’s trip report on the Open Hardware Summit (OHWS), listen to Don’t Panic Geocast, Episode 140 – “Juicero of Tractors” Ben’s websites are bhencke.com and electromage.com. Go there if you want to see some of Ben’s projects, including Synthia. You can also find Ben on Hackaday, Github, and YouTube. We talked with Charles Lohr about ESP8266 WiFi controlled lights and ColorChord on Embedded.fm episode 102: The Deadly Fluffy Bunny (With WiFi). Laser cut mandalas OSHPark Small Batch Assembly More about the 4-bit Radio Shack computer (and an Arduino-based emulator for it!) Santa Cruz Idea Fab Lab

Kitty Yeung (@KittyArtPhysics) spoke with us about the superposition of quantum computing and fashion.  If you want to learn more about quantum computing, check out Kitty’s series on Hackaday’s  Quantum Computing Through Comics.  Kitty works for Microsoft in Quantum Computing (@MSFTQuantum). Kitty’s art and fashion are available on her site, Art By Physicist, and shop shop.kittyyeung.com. Her recent addition is the Constellation Dress. There is a coupon code in the show. Kitty has some other DIY fashion projects: Made of Mars and Saturn Dress. @artbyphysicist on Instagram  LinkedIn

Chris and Elecia discuss transcripts, listener emails, and brains. We already have a post about the dangers of using Arduino for professional work. Elecia got a Cricut Maker to help her make origami and then discovered SVG files were editable (Intro to SVG). She’s putting her origami crease patterns in a github repo eleciawhite/origami), where else would you put it? About brains, Elecia was reading from Smart But Scattered.

Jess Frazelle (@jessfraz) of Oxide Computer (@oxidecomputer) spoke with us about hyperscalers (large companies that make their own datacenter server hardware) and podcasts.  Jess wrote an article about the power efficiency measurements of datacenter servers: Power to the People (ACM Queue August 2020). The Oxide podcast is available on oxide.computer/podcast as well as your usual podcast apps. Jess particularly recommended the episode with Jonathan Blow. Oxide is working to make hyperscaler-style hardware available to everyone. Their goal is to open source all their hardware and software: github.com/oxidecomputer. They use the Rust language for much of their development. Jess has a blog: blog.jessfraz.com Rust