Embedded

Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson) is back on the show to discuss education and the techniques he’s using to teach embedded systems. Jay has some great posts on his jaycarlson.net blog. The one related to this show was entitled “How I Teach Embedded Systems.” Jay was also on Embedded 226: Camp AVR Vs. Camp Microchip where we discussed his fantastic survey of micros in The Amazing $1 Microcontroller. We also mentioned one of his recent posts about 3 cent micros. Teaching has many different approaches. We talked about Bloom’s taxonomy and mentioned the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. 

Jen Costillo (@rebelbotjen) joins Elecia and Christopher to discuss their experiences interviewing (both as interviewer and interviewee). Elecia did an hour long webinar on how to conduct technical interviews. In this show, she mentions a good post-interview ratings system. Google discovered that their brainteasers are not a very effective way to interview. Despite the news that swearing is good for you, we tried to bleep everything. Also, it is minesweeper, not minefield. What were we thinking? It was obviously all Christopher’s fault. Though we should have stood up to him.  Elecia's book has more interview questions but from the perspective of how do you ask a question and what do you look for in a response.

Christopher interviews an embedded systems engineer with ~25 years of experience across medical, scientific, industrial and consumer products. He asks about career trajectory, field stories, and assorted destruction. Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software Tony’s show about Kalman Filters was 43: A Lot of High-Falutin’ Math  

Carter Frost spoke with us about the Cabrillo College Robotics club and winning the 2019 NASA Swarmathon. Cabrillo has many student clubs. Cabrillo Robotics has a Facebook page and is @CabrilloRobotic on Twitter. The club gets its funding from the Cabrillo Foundation (to donate, make sure to note “Cabrillo Robotics Club” in your contribution). Please RSVP for the Embedded 300 party on Eventbrite.com.

Christopher and Elecia talk about the upcoming Embedded 300 party (Sept 7th!), podcasting, and listener emails. Please RSVP for the party. If you didn’t hear the link in the show or don’t recall it, contact us. Thank you to iRobot for sending us Root Robots as prizes! Embedded Patreon Merchandise! We send the Samson Meteor as our guest mic. Thank you for listening!

Monk Eastman (@MonkFunkster) joined us for an enlightening conversation about hardware compliance engineering. We covered the basics of CE, FCC, UL, and battery certification.  We mentioned that Alan Cohen’s Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market has a good overview of certification. Alan was on Embedded 269: Ultra-Precise Death Ray. For a deeper view of compliance engineer, Monk suggested this book: Electrical Product Compliance and Safety Engineering. Listener Skippy wrote about his experience with CE certification. Monk plays bass saxophone in the East Bay Brass Band. Details on registering for the Embedded 300 party on Eventbrite.com are in the show itself.

Eric Brunning (@deeplycloudy) returns to talk about doing science in the field in this crossover episode with the Don’t Panic GeoCast’s John Leeman (@geo_leeman).  Eric is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University specializing in storm electrification and lightning. We spoke with Eric on 268: Cakepan Interferometry about lightning and using baking goods as measurement devices. Eric was also on GeoCast 134: Launching Balloons out of a UHaul. We spoke with John about his Phd research in 169: Sit on Top of a Volcano. The previous Don’t Panic GeoCast crossover was with John and Sridhar Anandakrishnan in 206: Crushing Amounts of Snow. John’s company is Leeman Geophysical. The paper was Reconstructing David Huffman’s Legacy in Curved-Crease Folding by Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine and Duks Koschitz. Elecia is working her way through Erik Demaine’s Phd thesis on the same topic as well as Jun Mitani’s excellent book Curved-Folding Origami Design. Geology also has folds. For 3D printed origami, Eric mentioned Henny Seggerman’s twitter @henryseg.

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) spoke to us about how hope can improve our software and work environments.  Chris is the author of Embedded Software Engineering 101 blog and has been on the show several times since his first appearance in 78: Happy Cows. He mentioned Seth Godin’s Three Wishes post. We talked attentional focus and passing basketballs. Details for the Embedded Cats and Hacks party are in the show. If you can’t attend, well, maybe you can still get a mug (zazzle). If you can attend, iRobot has graciously given us a couple Root robots that we’ll be giving away.

Shruthi Jaganathan spoke with us about recycling, machine learning, and the Jetson Nano (@NVIDIAEmbedded). More about the Green Machine, the computer vision, machine learning, augmented reality way to sort your lunch leavings. The code is available. The system was on a Jetson TX2 developer kit and Shruthi has been moving it to the physically smaller and only $99 Jetson Nano developer kit (buy).  Shruthi has been getting into AI with the Jetson Two Days to a Demo as well as NVIDIA’s free Getting Started with AI on the Jetson Nano online course. For more information about FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), we talked about it with Derek Fronek on Embedded 257: Small Parts Flew Everywhere.  

This week we talk about CircuitPython (@CircuitPython) with @adafruit’s Kattni Rembor (@kattni) and Scott Shawcroft (@tannewt).  The suggested first board is CircuitPlayground Express with LEDs, sensors, and buttons. CircuitPython is also available for many other boards including the BLE Feather (NRF52832). For a basic introduction take a look at What is CircuitPython and see some example scripts. To dig a little deeper, check out the many resources in Awesome CircuitPython. The whole thing is open source so you can see their code. If you are thinking about contributing (or just want some fun chats), get in touch on the CircuitPython channel of the Adafruit Discord server: adafru.it/discord Many of the language’s design choices favor ease-of-use over ready-for-production. Imagine teaching an intro to programming class without worrying what computers will be used or how to get compilers installed on everyone’s machines before time runs out.  One final note: Kattni did a project that gave us the show title: Piano in the Key of Lime. After we finished recording, Chris asked her why she didn’t add a kiwi fruit to her mix… Kattni explained she had limes and they were small. Chris only wanted a different fruit so she could rename it Piano in the Kiwi of Lime. It is always sad when we stop recording too early.