Embedded

Shaun Meehan (@logiclow) joined us to talk about robot arms and stealth rocket companies. Shaun’s rocket startup is hiring; information about the job openings are below.  Shaun’s robot arm is an ABB IRB-2000 (video of Fred). Elecia was reading How to Choose the Right Industrial Robot when Shaun emailed. He convinced her that the MeArm Pocket Size Robotic Arm is the likely best choice for her machine learning typer project (which needs a better name).  All this led to a discussion of inverse kinematics, robot operating system (ROS), and OpenAI. SparkFun has a nice guide to selecting the right motor if the DC, servo, stepper section went by a bit fast. Elecia mentioned the TI Piccolo line as good motor controllers, assuming you aren't building an FPGA controller from scratch on your own. Repair cafes are a thing. Shaun was on The Amp Hour 220: Doctiloquent Dove Deployer where he talked a lot more about his robot pets. For more about Fred, the robot arm, check out LogicLow.com. Also, see Shaun's github repo, Fun with Flip-Dots (on hackaday.io), his intended page for big servos (Not Your Hobby Servo, also hackaday,io)  His personal site detailing new projects, motors, and fire-breathing dodo birds is ShaunAndKelly.com.   Shaun recently enjoyed The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Stealth Space Rocket Company Hiring Information We are a small, highly entrepreneurial team of rocket engineers with deep technical expertise who love to build things and relish the idea of a grand challenge.  Building on over a decade of technology development in rocket propulsion, structures, and avionics funded by NASA and DARPA, we are applying a fast-paced, hardware-focused, agile approach to space launch. Are you an engineer, hacker, maker, or physicist who has always dreamed of building rockets? Come help us build the hardware and launch the services that will open the frontier of space to the next generation of entrepreneurs. The company is in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. If you want to apply, email Shaun: space at logiclow dot com.

Episode 200! Let’s have a party (and a survey)! Former guests joined us in a panel-style celebration of working in embedded systems: Alvaro Prieto, Andrei Chichak, Elizabeth Brenner, Chris Svec, and Chris Gammell. Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) was a guest on 130: Criminal Training Camp. Andrei Chichak writes Embedded Wednesdays and was on 99: You Can Say a Boat, 114: Wild While Loops and 139: Easy to Add Blood Splatter. Elizabeth Brenner (@eabrenner) was a guest on 17: Facebook Status: Maybe Not Dead and 54: Oh, The Hugh Manatee, Chris Svec (@christophersvec) writes Embedded Software Engineering 101 was on 78: Happy Cows and 139: Easy to Add Blood Splatter. Chris Gammell (@Chris_Gammell) was a guest on 35: All These Different Reasons Why You Might Want to Do Something as well as a co-host on the holiday Embedded/Amp Hour crossover episode 181: Work on It for Ten Years. Fiction mentioned: Authors Harlan Coben and CJ Cherryh Robopocalype by Daniel Wilson The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (Translator) Trollhunters HTML5 in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath Episodes cited as favorites: 94: Don't Be Clever 53: Being a Grownup Engineer 111: Potty Train Your Tamagotchi 187: Self-Driving Arm 162: I Am a Boomerang Enthusiast 150: Sad Country Song Tools discussed: Software: Beyond Compare, Edit+, and Crossover Logic analyzers / small oscilloscopes: Saleae, Digilent Analog Discovery and Digital Discovery Other tools: JLink Pro debugger/programmer,  HP16C calculator (recommended  emulator is Nonpareil for Mac and for Windows and Linux) Notes: T-shirt sales are probably already over unless you hurry. March micro madness and Digilent Digital Discovery contests also end very soon.

Chris and Elecia answer listener questions about contracting (and consulting). Reminders: T-shirts! Hat contest! Digilent contest announced in #197! It all ends around May 18th so get your entries in now! The original discussion was on episode 4: Are We Not Lawyers? Elecia's salary to rate conversion can be found as a Google spreadsheet. 

Walter Stockwell spoke with us about the legalization of drones, UAVs, UASs, and UFOs. Walter works at DJI which makes the Phantom. They have some jobs open. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson Intel/Pepsi drone show at SuperBowl halftime AOPA Facebook page The amateur model aircraft organization discussed was the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA).  ASSURE UAS Ground Collision Severity Evaluation Final Report (also: press release) Elecia mentioned the Madgwick Filter. Embedded.fm t-shirts are available for a limited time! There are two distributors: one US based, one Europe based. Choose whichever is closest to you. Elecia’s TV appearance on The Jennylyn Show is on YouTube. Digilent Digital Discovery contest ends May 19.

Chris and Elecia talk with each other about science fiction, advertising, ham radios, debugging tools, and programming languages. You can buy Embedded.fm t-shirts until May 18, 2017. You can always buy Elecia’s book: Making Embedded Systems. And don’t forget we have a Patreon if you’d like to support the show directly. Some science fiction we mentioned: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Nightfall and Last Question by Isaac Asimov, and the All This Time video from Jonathan Coulton. Digilent sent us goodies to review: one Analog Discovery 2 and two Digital Discovery units. So we did, though we didn't cover the high speed adapters and other nifty goodies. Check out Alvaro Prieto’s Troubleshooting tools HDDG talk for some additional information on the devices. For the giveaways, rules are in the show, hit the contact link to enter. Contest ends May 19th. Chris has been doing low-power ham radio contacts (WSPR) using an Ultimate 3S kit from QRP Labs. We talked about WSPR some with Ron Sparks in episode 76: Entropy Is For Wimps Make with Ada competition is back! It start May 15, 2017. We talked the 2016 competition with Fabien Chouteau in episode 158: Programming Is Too Difficult For Humans. Elecia is still fighting with Ubuntu before she can build her robot typist with her NVidia Jetson TX2 board. Philip Freidin sent in Stanford CS department’s reply to the lightning round question of “what language should you learn in the first college course?” Even better, he sent a link to a google spreadsheet showing how many schools answer the question. Elecia was on the Jennylyn Show. (I’ll update with a link to the specific episode on YouTube when it is available.) March Madness ended with PyBoard as the champion, more info on getting your winner’s hat soon.

Aditi Hilbert (@HilbertAditi) spoke with us about MyNewt, an Apache-licensed RTOS and bootloader. MyNewt’s Apache page is mynewt.apache.org and the github repository is github.com/apache/incubator-mynewt-core. In the README.md, check out the section marked browsing which points to the file system, ble stack, and assorted other source code goodies you may want to read. The secure bootloader code is also in there but as it is also a cross-RTOS effort (with Linux’s Zephyr), you can find the MCUBoot repository at github.com/runtimeco/mcuboot Aditi works for Runtime.io (@runtime_io), a primary contributor to MyNewt. They work with companies who want to use MyNewt on their products. We talked about OIC (openconnectivity.org) and using UDP endpoints over BLE. Constrained http is actually called constrained application protocol: CoAP (coap.technology). We also mentioned MQTT, an older standard attempting to solve some of the same problems. The Apache license is one of the most permissive of open source licenses: choosealicense.com/licenses Assorted other links discussed in the show: Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant List of HTTP status codes (418 is the best) Last year’s tshirts, logo will be the same but the shirts will be slightly different for the tshirt campaign starting April 26, 2017.

We discussed CubeSats with their co-inventor, Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at CalPoly SLO and co-founder of Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. The 2017 CubeSat conference is in San Luis Obispo, CA on April 26-28. More details at CubeSat.org. Information about CubeSats at CalPoly SLO can be found at PolySat.org. Tyvak is hiring for a number of different positions: tyvak.com/careers. For more satellite goodness, we spoke with Patrick Yeon of Planet about their CubeSat-based platform and deployment mechanism in Embedded episode 153: Space Nerf Gun. Thank you to Embedded Patreon supporters for Jordi’s microphone! 

Shulie Tornel (@helixpea) joined us to talk about the 2017 Hackaday Prize (@hackaday and @hackadayio). Hackaday World Create Day is April 22nd, let them know if you want do a meetup so they can add you to the calendar. Elecia gave away all of her potential ideas, trying to figure out which one would work best for entry. It was probably Maxwell except for its lack of novelty (Embedded shows #17 and #54 and there is a SparkFun Tutorial). Are you entering? The first phase (until May) is community driven (popularity contest). Post your entry here or tweet to us (@embeddedfm) and we'll like it. Also, it was Shantam Raj's Self-sustained Ultralow-power Node that we discussed in the show. Neon Demons (trailer) Embedded blog contributor Chris Svec was on the CodeNewbie podcast talking about robots and chip design. The following week Saron invited Elecia to record an episode about getting into hardware and embedded software.

Owen Anderson (@OwenResistor) joined us to talk about how compilers are written. We discussed LLVM, intermediate representation, clang, and GPUs. As mentioned at the end of the show, Owen’s current employer is hiring. If you are interested and would like to get the brownie points that come with being a friend of a friend, contact us and we’ll connect you to Owen and he’ll submit your resume. Recent books Owen mentioned: Manager Path, Feminist Fight Club, The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. LLVM Language Reference Teardown of what goes into rasterization What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior

Terry Dunlap, CEO of Tactical Network Solutions (@tacnetsol), spoke with us about security in the Internet of Things. The good: Top 10 Secure Coding Practices (from CERT.org) UL 2900 standard (consumer label for security) The bad and the ugly: FTC complain about TrendNet FDA alert about St Jude’s implantable defibrillator Mirai botnet

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) answer listener emails. Get your entries in for March Micro Madness, the matches start very soon. The short story Elecia finds most memorable is All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. We mentioned Procopio who teaches microcontrollers at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education ITESM (site, wiki) Hector sent up the IEEE Code of Ethics, a good high-level set of rules.

Matt Godbolt (@mattgodbolt) spoke with us about settling arguments with Compiler Explorer. Compiler Explorer comes different flavors: https://rust.godbolt.org/ https://d.godbolt.org/ https://go.godbolt.org/ https://gcc.godbolt.org/ You can see the beta version by putting a beta on the end:  https://gcc.godbolt.org/beta/ This a fully open source project. You can read the code and/or run your own version: https://github.com/mattgodbolt/compiler-explorer https://github.com/mattgodbolt/compiler-explorer-image Matt works at DRW working on low latency software. Note that DRW is hiring for software engineers. You can read about the evolution of Compiler Explorer on their blog. Matt’s personal blog is xania.org. You might like parts about 6502 Timings. He also has several conference talks on YouTube including x86 Internals for Fun & Profit and Emulating a 6502 in Javascript. Matt was previously at Argonaut Games. Jason Turner of C++ Weekly and his C++17 Commodore 64 Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? paper (with a nod to Don’t Panic GeoCast’s Fun Paper Friday)

Kari Love (@ikyotochan) spoke with us about creating soft robotics. You can see her edible soft robots talk from 33c3. Kari works at Super-Releaser. Her personal site (and blog) is Kari Makes. Kari mentioned that the Super-Release intern Aidan had some picks for soft robotics on Instructables. Super-Releaser created the Glaucus soft robot and Adafruit has an in-depth tutorial for how to make it. Some videos of soft actuators and soft robots: Super-Releaser Playing with Heat-Sealed Actuators (including the spiral) Silicone gripper from a cardboard mold Voxel Soft Robotic Simulation Evolution Super Long Mylar Robot MIT Tangible Media Group AeroMorph Soft Exoskeletons http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/11/12/wearable-power-assist-device-goes-on-sale-in-japan/ http://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/soft-exosuits http://www.roamrobotics.com/ Rat heart cell robot from Popular Mechanics First Autonomous Entirely Soft Robot (Harvard Octobot) VoxCad Tutorial for simulating soft robotics Also, if you haven’t seen Big Hero 6, you should. Consider it computer science homework. If you just want to see Baymax, here is a short video. Octopus: The Ocean's Intelligent Invertebrate (Elecia’s latest octopus related reading, the previous one was called Kraken)

Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) of the Hanselminutes Podcast talks about technology podcasting and philosophy. You can find Scott's blog on Hanselman.com/blog and his other podcasts on Hanselman.com/podcasts. We talked about Hansleminutes' WebVR episode with Ada Rose Edwards and Alcohol and Tech with Victor Yocco. We also mentioned Scott's blog post from 2014 about what technologies he would learn if he had to start over.

Crossing machine intelligence, robotics, and medicine, Patrick Pilarski (@patrickpilarski) is working on smart prosthetic limbs. Build your own learning robot references: Weka Data Mining Software in Java for getting to know your data, OpenIA Gym for understanding reinforcement learning algorithms, Robotis Servos for the robot (AX is the lower priced line), and five lines of code: pred = numpy.dot(xt,w) delta = r + gamma*numpy.dot(xtp1,w) - pred e = gamma*lamda*e + xt w = w + alpha*delta*e xt = xtp1 Patrick even made us a file (with comments and everything!). Once done, you can enter the Cybathlon. (Or check out a look at Cybathlon 2016 coverage.) Machine Man by Max Barry Snow Country by Bokushi Suzuki Aimee Mullins and her many amazing legs (TED Talk) Patrick is a professor at University of Alberta, though a lot more than that: he is the Canada Research Chair in Machine Intelligence for Rehabilitation at the University of Alberta, and Assistant Professor in the Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and a principal investigator with both the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute  (Amii) and the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (RLAI). See his TED talk: Intelligent Artificial Limbs.