Embedded

Kelly McEvers (@kellymcevers) joins us to talk about the definition of embedded.  Kelly McEvers is one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon news magazine. She is also the host of a new podcast called Embedded which takes a story from the news and goes much deeper into it.   Her Embedded podcast launches on March 31st.  Subscribe now on iTunes, listen onNPR.com or your favorite podcast app. Kelly's Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent's Dilemma is an amazing listen. Kelly mentioned her interview of a drone pilot, Lt. Col. T. Mark McCurley, author of Hunter Killer. She also interviewed Sarah Pennypacker, author of Pax. Elecia does not squee on air. But it was a near thing.

Christopher and Elecia chat about the Hackaday prize, Unity class (and their games), the blog, hams, and IDEs. Embedded.fm blog posts we discussed: Chris wrote about ham radio practice tests and his plane's maiden flight. Elecia is working her way through her book about taking apart toys. Chris Svec is taking a microprocessors approach in Embedded Systems 101. And Andrei's current Embedded Wednesdays posts have been about number format and accelerometer output. Sign up for the Embedded.fm newsletter to get blog content in your email box. Hackaday Prize! Yay! Sign up early and often. Chris and Elecia have been taking a Unity course on Udemy (pricing becomes more sensible after April 1). Elecia's game is live for the next 30 days, you can play it from your computer's browser (but not Chrome). Audio "enhances" the experience. Also: you were warned. Atomic Game Engine is another game engine but open source. Justin has 8 reels of 800 of Atmel AT32UC3A3256S-ALVR. Let us know if you'd like to be connected. Elecia liked the Ed Emberley Make A World drawing book. Bipedal robots at RobotShop.com for software programming or SparkFun's Redbot kit for more hardware oriented fun. If you missed last year's April Fools Embedded.fm: The Elon Musk of Earth. Feel free to listen to it again on April 1 as there will be no such gag this year. 

Dan Luu (@danluu) spoke with us about processor features, startups vs large companies, error handling, and computer science research.  Dan's blog is danluu.com. Some posts we talked about: CPU features since 1980 Working at Startups vs. Large Companies Recurring Postmorten Lessons Efficacy of Computer Science Research Areas Dan mentioned some conference proceedings he monitors. For computer architecture: ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA):http://isca2016.eecs.umich.edu/ IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Microprogramming & Microarchitecture (MICRO): http://www.microarch.org/ High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA): http://www.hpcaconf.org/ For software engineering: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): http://www.icse-conferences.org/ Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE): http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/fse2016/ He also mentioned Operating System Design and Implementation OSDI: https://www.usenix.org/conferences/byname/179

Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick Christopher's leg. Christopher agrees reluctantly once we determine the saliva will be anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. Sarah is a kinetic artist and some of her projects include a robot army (built your own from parts printed out or purchased at robot-army.com), Noodlefeet, and Carl (the flamingo of pendulum inversion). Her Zoness.com site is an umbrella for her drawn and robotic art. Specifically, you may enjoy her webcomic Gravity Roads, her YouTube channel, and/or herRobotic Arts blog. Some other topics we discussed: Sarah got into mechatronics at her time as SAIC. Festo's air jellyfish on youtube Algodoo.com 2d physics simulator Woodgears.ca for 3d printable gears Also, please check out our new embedded.fm/blog or if you prefer email updates, sign up atembedded.fm/subscribe.

Julia Evans (@b0rk) spoke with us about using profile analysis to debug programs. Her PyCon 2015 talk was Systems Programming as a Swiss Army Knife (video). Julia's blog is jvns.ca. Some of the posts we discussed include: Have High Expectations for Computers How I Got Better at Debugging perf top: An Awesome Way to Spy on CPU Usage Julia's favorite conference to speak at is Bang Bang Con in New York City, May 7-8, 2016. Coincidentally, the call for proposals is open. Also, please check out the Embedded.fm/blog!

Andrew "Bunnie" Huang spoke with us about manufacturing in China, writing books, and crowdfunding. Bunnie's new book is The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen. It is available via crowdsupply and the price goes from $30 to $35 when pre-ordering ends on March 17, 2016. Bunnie's blog is at www.bunniestudios.com, many of his professional projects can be found at www.kosagi.com including more information about the Novena open source laptop. Hacking the XBox is available for free from No Starch Press.  

Andrei Chichak and Chris Svec join us to talk about our new blog: Embedded.fm/blog (!!). Andrei was on 114: Wild While Loops, about error handling, as well 99: You Can Say A Boat, about MISRA-C. Andrei has been teaching Embedded Wednesdays, an embedded systems class for the Edmonton New Technology Society. It uses the STM32F401C-Discoveryboard. His course materials are on his site (chichak.ca).  Chris was on 78: Happy Cows, about empathy driven development. He's also working on a different embedded systems introduction (Embedded Software Engineering 101). His blog ischrissvec.com. Our new blog will include their coursework, excepts from Elecia's new book on taking apart toys, project notes from Christopher, and various other news.

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) answer listener questions about BASIC and their meet-cute story. (Sadly those are unrelated. That would have been cute.) Dennis Jackson at Airware is looking for a senior EE and an EE technician. Contact us and we'll connect you to Dennis so he knows to look out for you. Dennis' episode was 94: Don't Be Clever about drones, simple code, and learning. As for other interviews, Elecia was on The Amp Hour and  The Engineering Commons Podcast. Elecia and Chris were both on The Amp Hour's 256th show. 

Dan Saks answers many questions about C++ in embedded systems: where it works, where it doesn't, and a path to getting started.  Dan Saks is the founder and president of Saks & Associates. He was a columnist for The C/C++ Users Journal, Embedded Systems Design and several other publications. He also served as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ standards committee in its early years.  We touched on some of his articles: Poor reasons for rejecting C++ Preventing dynamic allocation Calling constructors with placement new Andrei suggested Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, Seventh Edition by Siddhartha Rao as a good primer for experienced C programmers reluctantly learning C++. Like robots? Check out the job postings at iRobot. If you like what you see, email Chris Svec. (Yes, the guy who was on 78: Happy Cows.) Contest for Making Embedded Systems will end Feb 5, 2016.

Inventor and Youtube-er, Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) tells us about building robots to "help" her daily life. Simone's YouTube Channel. Some of the videos discussed in the show: Chopping Machine VLOG and its TV commercial (Also: the servo motors used) Listener Feedback with TENS machine Wake up machine  Simone's blog, with additional robot build details is at simonegiertz.com.  For relaxation, Simone visits the Hello Denizen YouTube channel and watches hamsters eating gourmet meals. She also mentioned her preferred Reddit feed. Like robots? Check out the job postings at iRobot. If you like what you see, email Chris Svec. (Yes, the guy who was on 78: Happy Cows.) Contest for Making Embedded Systems will end Feb 5, 2016.