Embedded

Elecia gave a talk about machine learning and robotics at the Hackaday July Meetup at SupplyFrame DesignLab (video!) and LA CrashSpace. She gives it again in the podcast while Chris narrates the demos. Embedded Patreon Embedded show #187: Self Driving Arm is the interview with Professor Patrick Pilarski about machine learning and robotics applied to prosthetic limbs. I have also written more about my machine learning + robot arm on this blog. My code is in github (TyPEpyt). My machine learning board is Nvidia's Jetson TX2. The Two Days to a Demo is a good starting point. However, if you are new to machine learning, a better and more thorough introduction is the Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera. To try out machine learning, look at Weka Data Mining Software in Java for getting to know your data and OpenIA Gym for understanding reinforcement learning algorithms I use the MeArm for my robot arm. For July 2017, the MeArm kit is on sale at the Hackaday store with the 30% off coupon given at the meetup (or in Embedded #207). Inverse kinematics is a common robotics problem, it took both Wiki and this blog post to give me some understanding. I wasn't sure about the Law of Cosines before starting to play with this so I made a drawing to imprint it into my brain. Robot Operating System (ROS) is the publisher-subscriber architecture and simulation system. (I wrote about ROS on this blog.) To learn about ROS, I read O'Reilly's Programming Robots with ROS and spent a fair about of time looking at the robots on the ROS wiki page. I am using OpenCV in Python to track the laser. Their official tutorials are an excellent starting point. I recommend Adafruit's PCA9685 I2C PWM/Servo controller for interfacing the Jetson (or RPi) to the MeArm. Finally, my talk notes and the Hackaday Poster!

Natalie Silvanovich (@natashenka) discussed reverse engineering hardware, working on security software, and the fantastic world of Tamagotchis. Natalie's site and blog Hardware Excuse Generator Original CCC 2012 talk: Many Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation CCC 2013 talk: Even More Tamagotchis Were Harmed in the Making of this Presentation Natalie's upcoming BlackHat talk: Attacking ECMAScript Engines with Redefinition Flash exploit article for Project Zero: One Perfect Bug: Exploiting Type Confusion in Flash Tamagotchis are still available as are the works of Shel Silverstein (Snowball is in Falling Up). Natalie's Tamagotchi board"> Natalie's Tamagotchi board

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) has an idea about adding empathy to software development. It is a good idea. His blog is Said Svec. He works for iRobot and they are hiring. (Chris' email is given toward the end of the show but if you hit the contact link here, we'll pass along info to him.) Obligatory cat video Embedded has an episode devoted to impostor syndrome. O'Reilly's Head First book series is pretty awesome. Elecia is still talking about Thinking, Fast and Slow as a great way to understand brains. Chris Svec also recommends Make It Stick. The Richard Hamming quote came from his address to the Naval Postgraduate School. The whole lecture is available on YouTube.

Professor Ayanna Howard of Georgia Tech joins us to talk about robotics including how androids interact with humans. Some of her favorite robot include the Darwin, the Nao, and, for home-hacking, the Darwin Mini. Ayanna has a profile on EngineerGirl.org, a site that lets young women ask questions of women in the engineering profession. Elecia has been working on a typing robot named Ty, documented on the Embedded.fm blog. It uses a MeArm, on sale in July 2017 at Hackaday.com, with coupon noted in show. (don't use PayPal to check out or you can't apply the coupon). Other robots for trying out robots: Lego Mindstorms (lots of books, project ideas, and incredible online tutorials!), Cozmobot, Dash and Dot. Some robotics competition leagues include Vex, Botball, and FIRST.

This week, we mix things up a bit. This joint show with the Don't Panic Geocast. This episode explores what happens when electrical engineering meets geoscience in cold places. We're joined by guest Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Penn State to talk about geopebbles, ice, climate, and more! Asimov Robot Series Anthropornis (giant penguins) Ice crystal structure Ice streams GeoPebble Propeller Programming (Book) Fun Paper Friday: The Boring Company

This week we talked to Addie (@atdiy) and Whisker (@whixr), the Toymakers (@Tymkrs). They make electronics kits, videos, and conference badges. Toymakers site (tymkrs.com) has a link to their IRC channel, videos, and Tindie store(including those amazing heart simulators, the easy to make Amplify Me, and Protosynth Midi). Their reddit community is r/Tymkrs. It has a lot more information about the CypherCon 2017 badges. More about CypherCon at cyphercon.com. Some of their ZombieTech podcast is available on YouTube (along with First Spin and Patch Bay, see the playlists to find grouped series). Note that Rabbithole is the name of their hackspace as well as the video series documenting project creation. Episode 200 has the violin we discussed. We seem to have talked about a lot of other people on the show, especially shared friends and past Embedded.fm guests (some of whom were on ZombieTech). Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories with their online and Sunnyvale store. This is run by Lenore (40: Mwahaha Session) and Wendell (124: Please Don't Light Yourself On Fire) Joe Grand (58: Use These Powers For Good) John Schuch (74: All Of Us Came In Sixth) Alvaro Prieto (130: Criminal Training Camp and 200: Oops) Some fiction for you: Black Mirror (Netflix) Feed by Mira Grant [Everything by Mira Grant / Seanan McGuire is on my "devour immediately" list! -El] MiTel SX Technician's Handbook

Phoenix Perry (@phoenixperry) spoke with us about physical games. Phoenix is CTO of DoItKits (@DoItKits) and More about Phoenix: Bot Party Her site: PhoenixPerry.com Goldsmith's page She enjoyed Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin Physical games are sometimes called Alt Ctrl such as at the Alt Ctrl Game Jam. Phoenix co-founded Code Liberation with Nina Freeman (http://ninasays.so/) and Jane Friedhoff (http://janefriedhoff.com/). "Code Liberation catalyzes the creation of digital games and creative technologies by women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to diversify STEAM fields." There is an 8-part workshop in London in Summer 2017 (more info). Some other interesting people: Catt Small Lynne Bruning (http://etextilelounge.com/) Helen Steer (http://doitkits.com/) Perla Maiolino Rebecca Febrink How to Get What You Want wearables site Yoga Pants AutoDesk Fusion360 I know you only read the show notes because you wanted this link: Velastat LessEMF has the supplies for ghost hunting!

Charlie Ladd (@csladd) joined us to give an overview of good hardware practices. The oil quality sensor is from VSI Oil. Recent fiction included Ready Player One, John Scalzi, and Matthew Mather. To stay current, Charlie reviews the trade magazines: EEWeb.com, EDN, ECN, and EETimes. A junior engineer's tale of woe.

Professor Alex Dean spoke with us about his ARM embedded systems books and @NCState courses. Alex's page in North Carolina State University's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His book is Embedded Systems Fundamentals with Arm Cortex M Based Microcontrollers: A Practical Approach (ecopy available from the ARM Media site). It uses the FRDM-KL25Z as the example board throughout the text. Alex also co-authored Embedded Systems, An Introduction Using the Renesas RX62N His favorite RTOS is Keil RTX. We also mentioned about Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin and Flush by Carl Hiaasen

Shaun Meehan (@logiclow) joined us to talk about robot arms and stealth rocket companies. Shaun's rocket startup is hiring; information about the job openings are below. Shaun's robot arm is an ABB IRB-2000 (video of Fred). Elecia was reading How to Choose the Right Industrial Robot when Shaun emailed. He convinced her that the MeArm Pocket Size Robotic Arm is the likely best choice for her machine learning typer project (which needs a better name). All this led to a discussion of inverse kinematics, robot operating system (ROS), and OpenAI. SparkFun has a nice guide to selecting the right motor if the DC, servo, stepper section went by a bit fast. Elecia mentioned the TI Piccolo line as good motor controllers, assuming you aren't building an FPGA controller from scratch on your own. Repair cafes are a thing. Shaun was on The Amp Hour 220: Doctiloquent Dove Deployer where he talked a lot more about his robot pets. For more about Fred, the robot arm, check out LogicLow.com. Also, see Shaun's github repo, Fun with Flip-Dots (on hackaday.io), his intended page for big servos (Not Your Hobby Servo, also hackaday,io) His personal site detailing new projects, motors, and fire-breathing dodo birds is ShaunAndKelly.com. Shaun recently enjoyed The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Stealth Space Rocket Company Hiring Information We are a small, highly entrepreneurial team of rocket engineers with deep technical expertise who love to build things and relish the idea of a grand challenge. Building on over a decade of technology development in rocket propulsion, structures, and avionics funded by NASA and DARPA, we are applying a fast-paced, hardware-focused, agile approach to space launch. Are you an engineer, hacker, maker, or physicist who has always dreamed of building rockets? Come help us build the hardware and launch the services that will open the frontier of space to the next generation of entrepreneurs. The company is in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. If you want to apply, email Shaun: space at logiclow dot com.