Embedded

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.

Mike Harrison (@mikelectricstuf) challenged us to a PIC fight on Twitter. Surprisingly, no blood was shed and we mostly talked about LEDs and art installations. Mike’s YouTube Channel and his website electricstuff.co.uk His professional hire-him-to-work-on-your-neat-stuff site is whitewing.co.uk For driving LEDs, Mike likes the TI TLC5971: 12-Channel, 16-Bit ES-PWM RGB LED Driver with 3.3V Linear Regulator. Mike will be at 2019 Hackaday SuperCon!

Limor Fried of Adafruit spoke with us about engineering, education, and business.  Some new boards we talked about include the PyGamer and PyBadge (which also has a lower cost version). TinyUSB, an open and tiny USB stack from Hathach. In addition to the many excellent tutorials there are some interesting business related posts on Adafruit Learn: How to Build a Hardware Startup and How to Start a Hackerspace Want to get more involved with the extensive, wonderful, and supportive Adafruit community? Join their Discord chat server or Show and Tell on Wednesdays 7:30pm (ET) followed by Ask an Engineer at 8pm. 

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) babble about their current projects involving ants, guitars, machine learning, and party planning. A video of Christopher’s ants Some tweet threads about our tour of Santa Cruz Guitar Company. Arrival (also: very old wood) Wood is awesome Adding science to precision craft Elecia has been reading  Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow by Aurélien Géron. While the 2nd edition preview is on O’Reilly’s electronic library (formerly Safari Online), it will be available via Amazon on July 5th. Or pick up the first edition. Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry (290: Rule of Thumbs) is looking for blog posts, exchanging editing and exposure for posts that make sense on the site. Contact him with a topic idea before jumping in. For the Embedded blog, related to the show with Phillip, Elecia wrote a post about learning to give feedback. Listener Brian asked about a CS degree for going into firmware. We mentioned our show with Dennis Jackson (211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days). Listener Craig asked about PICs. We suggested taking a look at Jay Carlson’s Amazing $1 Microcontroller. We talked to Jay in 226: Camp AVR vs. Camp Microchip. Listener Happyday asked about UL testing. We added FCC testing then asked if any of you could help us. Hit the contact link on Embedded.fm. Embedded has a Patreon. There are new sponsorship levels! Nothing has changed though.

Karl Auerbach of InterWorking Labs spoke with us about how the internet works. We talked about domain name services (DNS being the primary one), registries and registrars, domain thieves, and the History of the Internet project. Karl runs his own (non-DNS) domain name service on his site www.cavebear.com. The site also includes notes from his time on the ICANN board (such as this one where they talk about redemption periods).

We spoke with Phillip Johnston (@mbeddedartistry) of Embedded Artistry about embedded consulting, writing about software, and ways to improve development. In the Embedded Artistry welcome page, there is a list of Phillip’s favorite articles as well as his most popular articles. Some of Phillip’s favorites include: Embedded Rules of Thumb Improving SW with 5 LW Processes Learning from the Boeing 737 MAX saga We also talked about code reviews and some best practices. The Embedded Artistry newsletter is a good way to keep up with embedded topics. You can subscribe to it at embeddedartistry.com/newsletter What are condition variables?