Embedded

Jason Kridner (@Jadon) joined us to talk about the BeagleBone Black... and other things. Some good books for Beagle : Bad to the Bone: Crafting Electronics Systems with Beaglebone and BeagleBone Black(co-authored by Jason) Getting Started with BeagleBone: Linux-Powered Electronic Projects With Python and JavaScript Programming the BeagleBone Black: Getting Started with JavaScript and BoneScript More comprehensive list of BeagleBone resources BotSpeak - A programming language for internet endpoints To contact Jason about ordering a bunch of units for your OEM use, see his contact info on BeagleBoard.org's About page.

Chris and Elecia went on vacation so this week we have music for you: the Ballistic Cats will be releasing a new album soon! If you like it, please check out the Ballistc Cats website. This album will be officially released on August 15, 2014. 

Craig Sullender of ChipSight joined Elecia and Christopher to talk about machine, computer, and embedded vision.  Craig's   $20 Vision System – IoTcam Lighting control demos  Slides on embedded CV technology Peep, a camera for your door'd peephole (soon to be on Kickstarter) Lattice Mach X02 O'Reilly's Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV

Joe Grand (@JoeGrand) spoke with us about his life as Kingpin, hardware hacking, hosting a TV show, and being a Hackaday judge. Joe's company is the Grand Idea Studio. His TV show Prototype This was on the Discovery Channel. He created an Atari game: SCSIcide.  Joe will be giving his hardware hacking training at Black Hat USA in August (as well as some of the other security conferences in also Las Vegas at that time). Joe and Elecia are on the Hackaday Prize judging panel. There are some amazing projects if you want to check out your competition (or vote for the ones you like!).

Ken Milnes talked to Elecia and Chris about his career developing augmented reality for sports broadcasting. SportVision MLB Stats

Matt Haines (@beardedinventor) and Tom Byrne (@tlbyrn) spoke to Elecia and Chris about Electric Imp (@electricimp). This discussion goes far beyond our first with Matt (Episode 6!). It is more software and implementation oriented than last week's Amp Hour.  In the vein of "what do I do after I've made an LED blink from a webpage?": Tom's Neopixel Weather project (instructable!) Mars Curiosity rover that mirrors what is happening on Mars (provide your own Martian) Elecia's are-you-ok widget Sparkfun tutorial, thanking Matt for his help with cleaning (ahem, re-writing) the code Electric Imp github repository, including the extensive webservices page Hackathon entry Twitch controls a HexBot via Electric Imp led to an excited discussion of Twitch Plays Pokemon  Matt's Hackaday Prize (SPACE!) entry that uses an Imp to show when the ISS is overhead MakeDeck is making Electric Imp dev kits for OEM  development.  Imp page devoted to the question under Next Steps (also, the new Squirrel documents mentioned on the show are up!) Finally, the SparkFun contest winner was announced. There were many great entries, choosing a winner was difficult. Ken M (@Deamiter) won the grand prize. Luckily, Matt and Tom brought two April board + Electric Imp sets to give away so Chris Svec (@christophersvec) and Alex Irvine (@EternalPractice) were runners up. Thank you to all who participated, your ideas were awesome and we loved to hear about them.

Radhika Thekkath, CEO of Agivox, joined Elecia to talk about her start up, entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, and getting NSF SBIR grants.  Contact Radhika  SBIR home page

Elizabeth Brenner (@eabrenner) returned to the show to talk about the are-you-ok widget that she and Elecia have been working on. (The initial problem-statement show is episode 17.) There is now a SparkFun tutorial so you can build one of the are-you-ok widgets yourself. As announced in the show, there is a contest to get a SparkFun gift card, it ends 6/13/14 so get your answer in by then (maximum of two entries per person, please). Elecia already took the name Sal Right out of the running (reference). In the photo below, are Maxwell, Hugh (Cation pattern!), Haley, and Grimes (from left to right) so those are all taken as well. Noted on the show were two things El saw at the Solid Conference: 3D printed flexible materials from Kinematics and circuit stickers from Chibtronics. Also, we look forward to trying out the Fitbit channel for if-this-then-that (IFTTT) to see if that can monitor our loved ones too.

Elecia attended O'Reilly's Solid Conference, recording a few of the people she met there. Note: this episode is recorded in a noisy location. Erin Mulcahy at littleBits (@littleBits), magnetic electronics modules Jack Mudd at Onewheel (@RideOnewheel), powered sort-of skateboard with only one wheel and auto-balancing Laurie Yoler from Qualcomm, she spoke on Intelligent Connectivity. It’s What’s Next Taylor Stein from AutoDesk, a Fusion 360 evangelist (free for hobbyists!) Ahmed Daoud from Playtabase, makers of Reemo Terrence McKenna of Panoptes ("No drone is safe until it is a Panoptes UAV.") Michael Holdmann at Coversant, on XMPP communications protocol Also, thank you to O'Reilly for giving away copies of my book. 

Jack Ganssle shared his wisdom on being a good embedded software engineer (hint: it takes discipline).  Jack's website is filled with great essays and new videos. He's also written the Art of Designing Embedded Systems and The Embedded Systems Dictionary (with Michael Barr). We covered a lot of ground, here are some of the highlights: Spark language Capers Jones on high quality software and associated statistics Joel on Software test for good teams LDRA unit test tool James Grenning's Test Driven Development for Embedded C