Embedded

Lindsey Kuper (@lindsey) spoke with us about !!Con West, being a new professor, and reading technical journals. The call for speakers for !!Con West is open until November 30, 2018. The conference will be in Santa Cruz, CA on February 23-24. Lindsey’s blog is Composition.al and it has advice for !!Con proposals, advice for potential grad students, and updates on Lindsay’s work. The Banana Slug is the UCSC mascot. Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie Lamport, 1978

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talk about conferences, simulations, and future episodes. Simulation/Emulation: QEMU and Renode. Chris also noted there were QEMU for STM32 instances such as this one from beckus. For conferences, we named several but had no particularly useful advice. We did recommend classes such as James Grenning’s training on TDD in Embedded Systems and Jack Ganssle’s Better Firmware Faster. There are several (free) machine learning courses available from Udacity including Intro to Machine Learning which was part of the Self-Driving Car series that Elecia took. The future basics episodes were grouped into: Flow of program control (pre-RTOS) Design patterns RTOS information

Anita Pagin gave us an insider’s view of being a recruiter. Anita recently started at Carbon3D and is recruiting for software and hardware. Anita also does career coaching on the side. Given the advice she gave us for free, imagine what she could tell you if you paid her. Finally, Elecia’s favorite list of resume keywords.

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) returns to chat about recruiting for embedded jobs and to help us answer listener questions. Also, he’s looking for engineers to join him at iRobot. Want to get into embedded and don’t know how? We did a show about that: 211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days. Also, there is an EdX class that is popular and a Coursera course that may be useful. You can meet up with Chris at Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA on Nov 2-4. Fulgurites are cooled lightning.

James Grenning (@jwgrenning) returns to discuss TDD, Agile, and web courses.  James was on Embedded.fm episode 30: Eventually Lighting Strikes. James' new company is Wingman Software. His excellent book is TDD for Embedded C.  James suggested Training From the Back of the Room! as resource to people looking to put together a class. He uses and recommends CyberDojo as a coding instruction tool. Before Agile was Agile-for-business, it was Extreme Programming. James recommends Extreme Programming Explained. James will be the keynote speaker at AgileDC in October.

Professor Angela Sodemann of @ASU spoke with us about new ways of teaching, robotics, and haptic displays. Angela’s robotics courses can be found at RoboGrok.com, including the parts kit. Note that they focus on creating usable robotics as well as teaching theory so there is math, code, and hardware.  

Noah Leon made a film: Love Notes to Newton. It features the people who love and the people who built the Apple Newton. We spoke with him about the Newton and about filmmaking. Noah runs Moosefuel Media. He wanted to mention Frank Orlando of OrlandoMedia, the art designer for the film and promotional material. Profits from Love Notes to Newton go to Be The Match, a registry of bone marrow donors. You can sign up for the Newton mailing list at NewtonTalk.net. The book about the Newton development is Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton by Markos Kounalakis. The documentary about Compaq is Silicon Cowboys (Netflix).  

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) is an author, education writer and maker. She spoke with us about making learning fun (and subversive). Her latest book is The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, out in November 2018. The instrument gloves were the mi.mu (full version) and the mini.mu DIY kit (coming soon to Pimoroni and Adafruit). The mini.mu uses the BBC Micro:bit. Helen worked on earlier books including Mission Explore from the Geography Collective. These are out of print but still obtainable (and may be in your local library). She recommends the book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. For meeting people in education and technology, Helen is looking forward to the next EMF Camp. As far as tech and education conferences, the BETT trade show is interesting. We mentioned “Phoenix” a few times, that is Phoenix Perry who was on episode 204: Abuse Electricity.

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talks about vacations for learning and hobbies then answered listener questions. Chris’ toys include the Prusa I3 Mk3 and the UAD Arrow. Elecia likes Camille Fournier’s book, The Manager’s Path. She also got to plug her own book, Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software.   Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis) at the Seymour Science Center

Brandon Wilson (@brandonlwilson) shared his stories about hacking TI calculators (and other things). TICalc.org has the latest on getting started yourself including Z80 assemblers, or start on Brandon’s website: brandonw.net Bradon will be speaking at Hardwear.io, a security conference for the hardware and security community. The conference consists of training (11th - 12th Sept 2018) and conference (13th - 14th Sept 2018). It is in The Hague, Netherlands. His talk is The Race to Secure Texas Instruments Graphing Calculators. He will also be hosting a village called Dumping the ROM of the Most Secure Sega Genesis Game Ever Created. Topics: 00:00:00    Introduction     00:00:33    Brandon Wilson     00:01:39    Lightning Round     00:02:37    Calculators!     00:03:58    Programmable calculators, using TI BASIC     00:05:00    Ti-85, programmable via assembly language     00:06:35    App store for my calculator?     00:07:34    How does TI prevent cheating?     00:09:41    Testguard for teachers     00:12:53    Some are WiFi capable     00:13:41    How Brandon learned to hack the TI 00:15:12    Processors used in the TI calcs 00:16:39    What tools are available for reverse engineering? 00:17:42    Breaking the keys     00:18:49    Flash unlock protection     00:20:14    TI hacker  community     00:21:32    TI used 512-bit RSA keys      00:22:32    Key broken after 2 months of brute force 00:22:58    TI threatened the first key breaker     00:23:31    Built a distributed community to attack keys 00:24:38    TI was not happy      00:25:03    DMCA takedown notice 00:27:28    EFF offered to help      00:29:30    The ethics of circumventing TIs protection     00:33:23    Calculators as a platform for learning HW/FW     00:35:11    Hackers' responsibility toward the hacked     00:39:05    Hacks Brandon is uncomfortable with     00:42:55    Bug bounties, are they effective?     00:44:02    Brandon's other projects      00:44:26    TI calculator processors used all over     00:44:50    Sega Genesis 00:47:54    Code execution via the Sega Genesis CD     00:53:35    Calculators changed my life (back up)     00:54:21    Other projects, USB      00:55:31    Abuse the USB protocol     00:58:24    Modifying USB flash drive FW     01:03:21    Reverse engineering tools     01:06:13    Hardwear.io conference, Brandon's hacking village     01:09:22    Brandon's Final Thought     01:10:19    Outro     01:11:20    Final Quote