Embedded

Phillip Johnston of Embedded Artistry, Tyler Hoffman of Memfault, and Elecia White discuss the software tasks that tend to fall through the cracks after the device has all its features but before it is in customers' hands. Noah Pendleton of Memfault was the moderator.  You can see the video on the Embedded YouTube channel or directly from memfault (also see their other panels and webinars). Memfault’s Slack Channel and Interrupt Blog are both excellent resources for embedded information of all kinds. Transcript

Kari Love joined us to talk about soft robotics, robots in religion, and squishiness. Kari co-authored Soft Robotics: A DIY Introduction to Squishy, Stretchy, and Flexible Robots. Her website is karimakes.com. She was previously on Embedded 189: The Squishiness Factor One of the pneumatic drives that we mentioned was a Hackaday Prize Winner: FlowIO. Another was the Soft Robotics Toolkit. However, Kari recommended Amitabh Shrivastava’s Programmable Air (Crowd Supply page for Programmable Air). Some search terms for getting started with soft robotics: “DIY Jamming gripper”,  “Positive pressure gripper”, and “bendy straw robot joints”. (That last one leads you to the delightful video Make a Robotic Hand with Straws.) Polysense conductive dye for making sensors out of found objects. (On Hackaday.) Simulation of Soft Bodies in Real World Applications (for squish and stretch) include SOFA, Abaqus, and DiffPD. Transcript An incomplete list of power systems people have used for generating soft robotic motion: Pneumatic - air and vacuum Hydraulic - using liquid Electrical - using currents Thermal - using temperatures Cable control - using motor control Magnetic - using magnets Chemical - using reactions Photonic - using light Biological - using living cells Hybrid systems - multiple sources in tandem   An incomplete list of things people have used to make soft robots: Fabric Silicone or other rubbers Flexible plastic Plastic films Metallic films Paper Carbon fiber Silly Putty Shape-changing alloys Electroactive polymers Liquid metals Gelatin or Gluten Cell tissue  

Chris and Elecia talk about internetting your thing, motivating yourself with cheese, a pile of scrabble letters, an electric ouija board, and a supervillain origin story. Elecia will be on a Memfault Panel on June 1, 2023: From Concept to Launch: What It Takes to Build and Ship a New Device  Elecia was on Alpenglow’s Industries Solder Sesh #60 with Carrie Sundra. See the highlights (or the whole thing) on YouTube. Chris has been working on building a baritone ukulele from a StewMac kit. The conversation about uninteresting projects reminded Elecia of one of her favorite blog posts: Resilience Is a Skill  Classpert will be offering a self-paced version of Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems course. Sign up on Classpert to be notified about the details. The O’Reilly Learning System will have the first looks of the second edition of Making Embedded Systems. The full book should be out in the fall. Transcript

Carl Bugeja makes actuators out of PCBs, puts them to work flapping origami bird wings (or moving robot rovers), and takes videos of the whole process. Oh, and get this, self-soldering circuits.  First, origami: flap actuators video. Your source for the PCB actuators: flexar.io Carl’s YouTube channel is filled with hardware, software, successes, and misses. Check out his tiny foldable rover and the self-soldering circuit. His projects are open source so you can find the information on github.com/CarlBugeja Carl has a site (carlbugeja.com) and shows his projects on Instagram instagram.com/carl_bugeja Elecia worked on a zero-heat-flux, deep tissue temperature measurement system. Transcript

We spoke with Chris Gammell about IoT, podcasting, relaxing, and learning. Chris works at Golioth.io. They have a neat blog that talks about reference designs, Zephyr RTOS, and making products. We talked about ESP chips which are made by Espressif. The ESP32 line is RISC-V. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) Some YouTube channels we discussed: Wendover Productions: explaining stuff CGP Grey, especially the recent one about vexillogy and US state flags Blacktail Studio: Soothing woodworking Adam Neely: music theory Shawn Hymel on Digikey’s channel explaining continuous integration and delivery: Intro to CI/CD The H note in music Want to know more about self-paced Making Embedded Systems? Sign up for the waitlist at Classpert. Want to learn electronics? Check out Chris Gammell’s Contextual Electronics. Transcript

Chris and Elecia talk about ChatGPT, conferences, online compilers, and Ardupilot. Compiler Explorer: godbolt.org (and function pointer example) Jupyter Notebooks with colab: colab.research.google.com/ (and one of Elecia’s origami pattern generator collabs) Sign up for the Embedded newsletter! Support us on Patreon. Conferences and happenings: Hackaday Prize Embedded Online Conference : late April, online Open Hardware Summit 2023: end of April in NYC, NY Teardown 2023 | Crowd Supply: late June in Portland, OR SEMICON West: July in San Francisco, CA  embedded world North America: October 2024, Austin, TX Transcript

We spoke with Charlyn Gonda about making things glow, dealing with imposter syndrome, and using origami. Charlyn’s website is charlyn.codes, the projects we talked about are documented there. You can find her on Instagram (@chardane) and Mastodon (https://leds.social/@charlyn). Adafruit came up a lot in this episode.  NeoPixel Jewel DotStar High Density 8x8 Grid SAMD21 QT Py and RP2040 QT Py Adafruit IO  Jason Koon’s Fibonacci displays are mesmerizing. Check them out on Jason’s website www.evilgeniuslabs.org or acquire them on Tindie. It can be controlled with the Pixelblaze. Sonobe modules in origami Transcript

Peter Griffin spoke with us about operant boxes, juggling many projects, getting into embedded systems, and bottle rockets.  When we talked about 3D printing, Peter mentioned the Maker Muse Clearance and Tolerance 3D Printer Gauge. The book we mentioned was Hot Seat by Dan Shapiro (Embedded 125: I Like Cheat Codes). Peter on Github Transcript Please note that Peter Griffin spoke with Embedded.fm as an individual and not as representative of Slalom Consulting or any other organization.  All views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily those of his employer or any other organization.

Chris and Elecia talk about photons, comets, patterns, other flying objects, and cameras. Chris uses PixInsight for processing  and has an Ioptron Sky Tracker. Apologies to our southern hemisphere listeners because Polaris is not visible there. There are (of course) other ways to align and even in the northern hemisphere more modern trackers don’t necessarily need Polaris. Star Exterminator: who cares what it does it has an awesome name. Though it does what it says (on photos, no real stars were harmed in the making of this podcast). Jupyter Notebooks on a Circuit Python board. Elecia’s Yoshimura sine pattern generating Python colab. Also, Rigidly foldable origami gadgets and tessellations is an excellent article about Miura-ori and other rigidly foldable patterns. You can see her patterns over on Instagram. (You can see some of Chris’ photos on his Instagram.) Transcript

Adafruit’s Liz Clark (BlitzCityDIY) spoke with us about MIDI, music, and tutorials.  Liz’s Adafruit Tutorials include MIDI for Makers CircuitPython Trombone Champ Controller Mini LED Matrix Audio Visualizer  CircuitPython MIDI to CV Skull Liz sometimes hosts the Adafruit Show and Tell which is Wednesdays 7:30pm ET. Speaking of Adafruit videos, we mentioned the Fusion 360 tutorial on Snap Fit Cases. Liz’s BlitzCityDIY YouTube channel shows her building instruments including her mentioned Melody Maker. She also has many 3D printables and github repositories under github.com/BlitzCityDIY Christopher notes that there are browser extensions that allow a person to stop auto-playing GIFs. VCVRack is a Eurorack simulator for synthesizer modules. Sadly, Mutable Instruments has shut down. Transcript