Embedded

Anh Bui, Vice President of @Benetech Labs, joined us to discuss using technology for good.  Benetech is most widely known for Bookshare, an online library for people with print disabilities. Note that this is only open to people with print disabilities per the Chafee Amendment (copyright exceptions with cause). There are some public domain books you can search through on the site. Martus is another of Benetech's core programs, in their human rights and civil liberties program. It is an open source, secure information collection and management tool. Poet Image Description Tool is a Benetech tool to aid in making visuals more accessible to everyone. Some accessibility guidelines and techniques: W3 Web design accessibility Apple's many accessibility resources POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) website design article Enabling The Future is the group that 3D prints prosthetic limbs.The Dean Kamen water filtration system is called Slingshot. Hackaday Prize (2016 announcement is coming!) For more information about the embedded software position at Avid Identification Systems, please email Mark (Engineering Manager) and CC Karen (HR Manager). 

Eric Hankinson (@Kumichou) tells us about the new embedded software components ofContextual Electronics. There is a 10% coupon announced in the show, good until June. CE uses the ST-Nucleo-F030R8 board. Eric's blog is www.erichankinson.com and his day job is at LeanDog. The Amp Hour episode with Chris and Elecia is 281: Crossovers and Call-ins Sealand

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) inflict lightning round on each other, talk about their new favorite toys, and get momentarily serious about performance reviews. Elecia is looking for a datasheet for the SunPlus SPHE8104GW. Not the 8200. This is not something Google-able. It probably requires knowing the right person, but if you do (or if you are the right person), please help.  Tickle is the IOS app to program the Sphero BB-8 (and many other robots) in the kids programming language Scratch Laser Stars Indoor Light Show Automatic: BLE car monitoring The Cheerson CX-10 is the base model quadcopter Elecia and Chris have been playing with. They flew a CX-10C with its 0.3MP video camera off a cliff at beach (but it didn't record the video). Elecia's self-evaluation for 2014 year is on her blog Python library for mashing binaries into other forms is IntelHex Elecia couldn't find the .map file scripts she was thinking of though one on stackoverflow was pretty close

FIRST Robotics is way to get students of all ages into robotics. Former participant and dedicated mentor, Michael Hill (@Michael_A_Hill) tells us about FIRST and how we can get involved. Official site: FIRSTInspires.org which also has a list of volunteer roles and qualifications Forums are at ChiefDelphi.com This year's theme is FIRST STRONGHOLD and was designed in collaboration with Disney. There is a trailer on YouTube (expect castles!). One of the NI control units is the RoboRIO (not the nearly-already-a-robot RIO Robot we linked to initially, thank you Alan Anderson!) Micheal's team is Innovators Robotics. Chris and Elecia will be helping out on The Amp Hour call in show, recording January 6,2015. If you'd like to chat, hit our contact link or email feedback@theamphour.com. Please include your  name, location, Skype name and what you hope to discuss on air.

Sarah and Abi Hodsdon speak with us about being a maker family.  Sarah's site and blog are Sarahndipitous Designs, her twitter handle is @sarahndipitous. The online K-12 school they use is Connections Academy. Making Makers by AnnMarie Thomas is a book about encouraging kids toward making.  Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle is an excellent addition to any library. Giwishes is a massive global scavenger hunt. Some learning sites the Hodsdon's recommend include: Code Academy Kahn Academy Instructables For e-textiles and wearables, they recommend: Lynne Bruning's eTextile Lounge Becky Stern Leah Buechley's Sew Electric book

Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) spoke with us about laser turrets, tearing down quadcopters, flux capacitors, the moon, and culture at work. Alvaro's blog Alvaro's github repositories including Proto-X quadcopter information, Silta bus monitoring, and Skype video message exporter for OSX. One of the inspirations for taking apart the Proto-X was watching Micah talk about herCoastermelt project. We talked to her about it on episode 101: Taking Apart the Toaster. One of his reasons for going to Planet Labs was knowing Shaun Meehan, check out his Amp Hour interview. Daemon by Daniel Suarez Video of Supercon talk on laser shooting robots Podcast Award nominations open in early 2016

We ask Matt Berggren (@technolomaniac) to envision an ideal world of product creation.  Matt's Spartan 6 FPGA shield is on the Hackaday Store. Its build process is documented on Hackaday.io. You can see Matt's other projects on Hackaday.io/matt. Matt works for SupplyFrame. Wishbone is the open source bus system that Elecia likened to ARM's AHB/APB.

Simon Monk (@simonmonk2) talks with us about zombies and writing books.   Simon has 20+ books out, check out his Amazon author page or his web page for a full listing (simonmonk.org). Some you might want sooner rather than later include: The Maker's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: Defend Your Base with Simple Circuits, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi Hacking Electronics 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius Kits for building some of the projects from Simon's books can be found at Monk Makes. (@monkmakes).

🐔=🦃+1 (or Why isn't there a duck emoji?) Christopher and Elecia talk about languages, twitter, listener emails, and Star Wars. Podcast Awards The Amp Hour talked about languages, they also referenced this compiler writing exercise C alternative tokens iso646.h and an up to date C reference (Harbison and Steele) $20 Linux board from vocore.io Real Strawberry DNA extraction technique (Elecia forgot the soap and the salt.) fromScientific American (with real science) or in easy-to-follow picture form on genome.gov.

Dan Shapiro (@danshapiro), CEO of Glowforge (@glowforge), speaks with us about laser cutters and his book, The Hot Seat. If you succumb to the wonder of 3D laser printers, consider using our Glowforge link so you get $100 (and we get $100). Dan's book, the one Elecia gushes about, is The Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook. Some of that information is also found in Dan's blog.  If you are in the Seattle area, Glowforge is hiring! Check out their jobs page. We didn't talk much about Robot Turtles, a game to teach programming principles to preschoolers.(Also on Amazon.) There is another interesting interview with Dan at Tested.com.