Embedded

Dr. Edward White spoke with Elecia about how technology has changed medicine. He described gadgets used in surgery (harmonic scalpel!), how hospitals acquire tools, and why engineers should be focused on patient benefit.  iPhone based EKG

Karen Lightman (‏@khlightman) joins Elecia White to talk about the infinite awesomeness of tiny MEMS devices. Recorded at the (somewhat noisy but lovely and delicious) Blue Brasserie during SEMICON West. Karen is the Executive Director of the MEMS Industry Group, the nonprofit trade association advancing MEMS across global markets. This the group that wrote the standard definitions that make MEMS easier to use, see the Resources section of their website. MEMS Executive Congress in Napa, Nov 7-8. Please bring new MEMS devices to the pitch event (Elecia is a judge!).  They mentioned some ignorance of RF MEMS, looks like someone need to read this book. Energy harvesting kits we discussed were from MicroGen. They have a neat youtube video. Redux of the Feynman's There's More Room at the Bottom  lecture.

Jen Costillo (@r0b0ts0nf1r3) joins Elecia White to discuss the secret parts of C, keywords that only embedded software engineers seem to know about. They talk about interviewing and why these keywords make good questions for finding folks who use the language to its full potential. On the show they mention a list of embedded interview questions with answers. (Note: Elecia's book has many excellent interview questions and what interviewers look for when they ask them.) Producer Christopher White sends along a more concise introduction to the often unused register keyword. 

Randi Eckstein grilled Elecia White (@logicalelegance) on inertial sensors: when to use accelerometers vs. gyroscopes; gyroscopes vs. rate sensors; how to make an inertial measurement unit; the basics of quaternions and Kalman filters; what products need which sensors (and why). Other good resources: Sensor Wiki (excellent visualizations) Guide to using IMU  (step by step practical information starting with ADC capture) Sparkfun inertial sensor buying guide (descriptions on what's available and how to differentiate between them)

Elecia White is on vacation. Please enjoy some music from the Ballistic Cats!

Josh Chan and Tarun Pondicherry, founders of Light Up, join Elecia White to talk about how to teach electronics to elementary and middle school students. The Light Up Kickstarter ends on June 30, 2013, click on that link to buy your kit or to see the video (including the augmented reality smartphone application). We also talked about going on Kickstarter, being a startup and about HAXLR8R, an accelerator to help hardware startups. El's version of the traffic model of analog electronic components came from There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings.

Matt Haines (@BeardedInventor) of Electric Imp joins Elecia White to discuss how to connect cats (and other things) to the Internet. Buy an Imp on Adafruit but don't forget the adapter (aka April board). Get started with programming in Squirrel and find hardware details in the developer section of Electric Imp. We also mentioned Lockitron, a commercial product that uses Electric Imp.

Akkana Peck (@akkakk) joins Elecia White to talk about an introduction to Arduino workshop for high school students. Arduino boards are a fantastic way to encourage people into embedded systems. The boards are cheap, the starter kits are great, there are lots of things you can do with them, and the compiler software is free. Akkana's site (Shallow Sky) has the workshop outline, going from morning general activities to afternoon specific ones. The really simple circuit for the photo-theremin we had on the show is linked from there (and the latest code is on github). A separate post describes the the cheap motor boards she's been working on, including the specific chips (including the H-bridge). The summer camp we discussed is GetSET and they eloquently describe themselves as "a program for high school girls of underrepresented ethnic groups to show them that engineering is fun, is creative, improves lives, and is an exciting career option". It is free to the student, funded through the efforts of the Santa Clara Society of Women Engineers (SWE) chapter.

Elecia and Chris (@stoneymonster) discuss why they chose to go into consulting and what they've learned while building Logical Elegance into the company it is. SCORE is a great resource for small business, even consulting firms.  Also check your local small business administration (SBA) chapter. Elecia's salary to rate conversion can be found as a Google spreadsheet.  Chris suggests Crash plan and Backblaze for backing up your client specific virtual machines (and everything else!). If you have specific requests, drop us a note via the contact link on embedded.fm. 

Elecia White and Phil King of Weekend Engineering talk about things a hardware engineer wants software engineers to know. Drifting a bit from topic to topic, they touch on interviewing, oscilloscopes, ways to light hardware on fire, why they work on projects at home and writing novels. Some links from the show: Phil works at Lytro making amazing cameras. Elecia and Phil have worked at Leapfrog and ShotSpotter together. Very different products. Phil's oscilloscope (the one Elecia borrows) is a Tektronix DPO4034. At Phil's instigation, Elecia wrote a space opera novel for NaNoWriNo a few years back. (If you contact us, you can have a PDF for free. But really, she wrote it in a month, what do you expect? Buy her real book to get the good stuff.)