Mohit Bhoite makes functional electronic sculptures from components and brass wire. We spoke with him on the hows and whys of making art. Mohit’s sculptures, including the Tie Fighter. More on his instagram: mohitbhoite Jiri Prause has a wonderful tutorial on how to make simpler freeform electronics on Instructables. Peter Vogel is another artist making phenomenal freeform electronics. Leonardo Ulian uses electronic components in his art (his don’t function but wow). Advice from Mohit on trying this yourself from Bantam Tools. Mohit likes Xuron Pliers Mohit can be found on twitter as @MohitBhoite

Eric Schlaepfer and Windell Oskay are the authors of Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components. We discussed the inner beauty of a number of electronic components as well as cameras, photography, writing, preparing samples, and terrible title puns. You can pre-order the physical book and get a digital early release copy at NoStarch.com/Open-Circuits Windell is co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratory (@EMSL). He and Eric have collaborated before on several projects: The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Timer  The 555SE Discrete 555 Timer The XL741 Discrete Op-Amp Kit The 741SE Discrete 741 Op-Amp Eric is also known for the Monster 6502, a 6502 processor made up of individual transistors. Eric also writes on tubetime.us and is on Twitter as @TubeTimeUS Sign up for the Embedded newsletter by the end of July and be entered to win one of these lovely prizes: The Three Fives Kit: A Discrete 555 Timer (two) A copy of Open Circuits (one) Transcript A lovely reject from the book, this is the base of a neon bulb from GE.

Chris and Elecia question embedded systems then answer listener questions about embedded systems. They mostly agree except about one thing which, after some discussion, they agree upon. Mostly. Video of Cissy Strut cover where Chris plays all of the instruments Video where Elecia shows off some programmatic origami and simulation (not discussed but it seemed reasonable retaliation for talking about Chris’ video) Dynamic Linker for Cortex-M (github repo) Transcript

Alexandra Covor spoke with us about engineering, making, drawing, school, and what it means to be an artist.  Alex’s projects are on GitHub and Hackster.io. Her electronics comics can be found as PikaComics on Instagram. The 2022 Open Hardware Summit named Alex as part of the Ada Lovelace Fellowship. Her favorite talk from the summit was Anuradha Reddy talking about Knotty (Naughty) Hardware. Alex works for Zalmotek, a design services firm in Bucharest. We talked about Waylay.io, including their smart pet feeder built on that platform. For example projects for Edge Impulse, they built a tools organizer that uses ML. Transcript

John Catsoulis is the founder of Udamonic and creator of the Forth-based Scamp development board. He spoke with us about Forth, electrical engineering, and writing a technical book. Find out more about Udamonic’s Scamp at udamonic.com. There are some hardware projects under the Create menu. The Forth programming language is famous for its small size, portability, and post-fix (RPN) nature.  John wrote O’Reilly’s Designing Embedded Hardware. While some parts are out of date, the general theory is still good. CuriousMarc’s YouTube channel is full of retro-computer goodness. Long ago, Elecia read The Eudaemonic Pie and imagined a life of high tech crime. Please don’t tell her if it doesn’t hold up well. Transcript

Lead Solution Architect at Cymotive, Benny Meisels spoke with us about implementing embedded software security in cars. The discussion touches ECUs, IoT vehicles, threat and risk analysis, and how reverse engineering plays a role in security testing. Benny works at Cymotive (https://www.cymotive.com/). You can find him on LinkedIn benny-meisels or on Twitter @benny_meisels. Resources for automotive security: Automotive Security Research Group (ASRG) Upstream Security Hacking a VW Golf Power Steering ECU - Part 1 – Willem Melshing's Blog  Instrument Cluster (ICM) Simulator: ICSim on github Program | escar USA conference | Embedded Security in Cars Car in a box, also on github and Arduino based: A lower cost approximation of the Toyota PASTA:Portable Automotive Testbed with Adaptability  Ghost Peak: Practical Distance Reduction Attacks Against HRP UWB Ranging Framework Laptop  Transcript

Laura Abbott of Oxide Computing spoke with us about a silicon bug in the ROM of the NXP LPC55, affecting the TrustZone.  More information about the two issues are in the Oxide blog: Another vulnerability in the LPC55S69 ROM Exploiting Undocumented Hardware Blocks in the LPC55S69  More about LPC55S6x and their LPC55Sxx Secure Boot Ghidra is a software reverse engineering framework… and it is one of the NSA’s github repositories. Laura will also be speaking about this at Hardwear.io in early June 2022 in Santa Clara.  Twitter handles: @hardwear_io, @oxidecomputer, @openlabbott, The vulnerability was filed with NIST: NVD - CVE-2021-31532 Transcript

Chris and Elecia chat about practice, software quality, and empathy for seemingly unmotivated team members.  Elecia is teaching another cohort of Making Embedded Systems in the fall, starting late August. There will be reminders between now and then but if you want to sign up, here is the page. The funny and odd music instruction video with the copy-and-paste method of composition. Sign up for the newsletter! Support us on Patreon! Transcript

Tom Anderson returned to the show to describe how transistors and passives work. We discuss everything from vacuum tubes to diodes to transistors (PNP and NPN) to resistors and capacitors. We search for synonyms among the confusing terminology of cathodes, plates, emitters, anodes, grids, bases, and collectors.  This was a tech heavy episode so little bit of brushing up on terms may be useful before (or after): Boltzmann constant Physical constant Vacuum tube Diode logic Diode  Push–pull converter Transcript.

Ethan Slattery joined us to talk about animals, animal trackers, and how they work. Ethan works for Wildlife Computers. They use the Argos Network for data transfer. He was previously at MBARI and worked with Engineers for Exploration as an undergraduate. Ethan is also known as CrustyAuklet on Twitter and Github. He also has an Instagram page.  Things mentioned in the show you might want to know more about: Nautilus Live is a streaming YouTube channel from an ROV exploring the oceans. They have periodic dives where you can ask scientists about what they are seeing, while they are seeing it. Watch discoveries happen in real-time. Or watch the highlight reels on YouTube. Ze Frank also has a YouTube channel about animals called True Facts that it is … not as scientifically minded. And sometimes NSFW. Start with the True Facts about the Ocotupus.  (Note he did a parody of a Nautilus Live dive).  The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman Penguin, pangolin, whale shark, weta, you might have heard about those but what about the cassowary? In-depth documentary video, people on the internet are idiots video, and Wikipedia. Transcript