Embedded

Chris and Elecia talk to each other about compiler optimizations, bit banging I2C, listener emails, and small-town parades. Games to learn/play with assembly languages include The Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation and TIS-100 by Zachtronics. We've been enjoying the Embedded Thoughts blog. And Chris is reading Practical Electronics for Inventors and liking it. We talked a little about Interview.io's adventure in voice changing. Shirts are gone for awhile. New logo stickers are available at StickerMule if you'd like to support and share the show.

Fabien Chouteau of AdaCore (@AdaCoreCompany) spoke with us about the Make with Ada Programming Competition. Boards are STILL AVAILABLE. Say the magic words and they might be yours. If you also email. The Ada programming language (wiki) is interesting in that it was designed for safety critical embedded systems (actually designed, requirements doc and everything!). The Ada Information Clearinghouse has a nice list of tutorials and books as does the very helpful Make with Ada Getting Started page. Elecia's favorite was Inspirel's Ada on Cortex. Some neat projects in Ada that we mentioned on the show: Fabien's CNC Controller (with code in github) Tetris on a Smart Watch (with a formal proof via SPARK) Nano drone flight controller (with formal proof via SPARK) The platforms supported in the contest are on the Getting Started page but you can expand that by looking at the SVD files in the AdaCore drivers on github. (Also, SVD files are neat.) One of the platforms already supported is the Crazyflie nanodrone.

Robb Walters of Flybrix (@flybrix) spoke with us about LEGO-based drones. We graciously let him leave with all his hardware. This time. For a limited time, you can get an Embedded.fm tshirt: teespring.com/embedded-fm. Order by the end of June or miss out. (More info about the shirts.) You can order your Flybrix kit and or read their controller code on github (or their controller app code). Robb mentioned a C++ book he liked, it was Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 by Scott Meyers. He also noted LEGO bricks resale sites: Brickowl and Bricklink. LEGO Digital Designer looks like a fun way to design builds. Cascade PID controllers are on Wikipedia (though I found this tutorial a little easier). The congratulations offered at the top of the show were to Meshpoint.me for winning the Best Humanitarian Tech of the Year at the Europas Conference.

Jeri Ellsworth (@jeriellsworth) spoke with us about the latest developments at CastAR, hiring engineers, and her favorite engine. Embedded.fm T-Shirts are available until the end of June on Teespring (more info). CastAR is making an augmented reality system. They are in Palo Alto, CA, USA and they are hiring. They work with Playground. Jeri was last on Embedded.fm episode 23: Go For Everything I Want.

Jonathan Bradshaw spoke with us about working with hardware engineers, schematic reviews, and FPGAs. At the end of the podcast, Jonathan made a pitch for folks to submit proposals for the IEEE Southern Power Electronics Conference in Auckland in December. The FPGA boards Elecia mentioned were the XLR8 board and the Papillio platform (more on the latter in show #66). By the way, The Amp Hour is our “enemy podcast” but we actually like their show quite a lot. It is a joke. But do feel free to tweet their shameless advertising tweet with the link replaced with one to our show. And weta are neat! (Image, wiki)

Jeff Keyzer (@MightyOhm) joined us to talk about consumer manufacturing, how to solder, and having a full time job and a kit company. Jeff's blog is on MightyOhm.com. The Geiger Counter kit is available at MightyOhm.com/geiger. The really, really useful Soldering Is Easy comic book is MightyOhm.com/soldercomic. At Valve, Jeff worked on the Steam Controller (hardware specs at bottom of the Valve page or for sale on Amazon). There is also a neat video showing the manufacturing automation in action. We mentioned Glowforge, Dan Shapiro was on episode 125 (and if you are going to buy one, please consider using our referral link!) Elecia and Chris have a Hakko FX-888 soldering iron. Jeff suggests Kester 186 flux which you can get in smaller-than-giant containers on eBay. No, not the pen on Amazon. Or maybe the MG Chemicals 835 (which is in little bottles on Amazon). Flux seems like a very personal thing.

Patrick Yeon of Planet Labs spoke with us about making satellites. We discussed a method of using orientation to control drag to control speed. While Patrick wasn't sure what he could say about GPS receivers on satellites, another site describes them as part of the flock. Sign up to get access to the huge Open California data set. Planet has many applications and their blog shows off some interesting finds, such as identifying illegal gold mines encroaching on rainforests, quantifying ports with computer vision, counting trees and classifying agriculture crops, fire mapping, and cloud detection. They are still hiring, apply using the email embeddedfm at planet.com will earn us (err, not you) more free tshirts.

Chris and Elecia chat about hobbies and respond to listener feedback and questions. Chris was on an episode of Let's Drone Out, you can listen to it here or search in your favorite podcast platform. It is recorded and broadcast live every Thursday at 8 P.M. (UTC+1) on Powering On. Chris' new quadcopter is a Vortex 285. It runs Clean Flight, an open source flight controller software package. While we had various opinions about RTOSs, we were both interested in the one Alvaro suggested to us: Zephyr Project. As for other embedded podcasts, of course you know about The Amp Hour. And we had Saron of CodeNewbie podcast on, that show is mostly software and people. How about Macrofab Engineering? Or O'Reilly's HW podcast?

Paul Sidenblad spoke to us about his engineering career, starting off with GE's work on the Gambit spy satellite. Google Protobufs Elecia read Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites a few years ago and remembers liking it, though this was the first time the information was useful.

Torie Charvez spoke with us about what it takes to start and run your own business in the US. We talked about starting your own consulting company, selling your latest gadget, and all of the bookkeeping, tax issues, and details involved. Torie's company is Tax Goddess. The write-off publication she mentioned is on the IRS site is Chapter 8 of Publication 535. Elecia mentioned her Snow White's Guide to Your First Stock Options.

Craig Smith (@OpenGarages) spoke with us about hacking the software in cars. His book is the Car Hackers Handbook. There is a 40% off coupon toward the end of the show. OpenGarages is Craig's site to improve and encourage hacking. Some tools he recommends for getting started are USB2CAN and CANTact. An older (shorter) version of the handbook is on OpenGarages. I Am The Cavalry (iamthecavalry.org) is an excellent site for learning more about security. CERT.org is also good. Theia Labs is Craig's company.

Saron Yitbarek (@saronyitbarek) spoke with us about Code Newbie, a site that help people learn to program and about the Code Newbie podcast. We mentioned Paul Ford's Code Newbie episode discussing his Bloomberg issue code. Saron also has a personal blog which has her post I am not a tinkerer. Saron spoke on Punching Your Feelings in the Face at ELA Conf 2015.

Micah Elizabeth Scott (@scanlime) joined us to talk about her new art and engineering projects. Micah's site is misc.name/ and her YouTube channel is micahjd. She launched a Patreon page. Wiggleport has its own site (wiggleport.org) and github (github.com/wiggleport). Check out the art in the repo! The Bela project on kickstarter has some overlap. Micah will be keynoting the 2016 Open Source Hardware Summit in Portland in early October. Her Eclipse project (video) was at the NEAT exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, CA. Micah has been on Embedded.fm before: 101: Taking Apart the Toaster (mostly about Coastermelt) and 41: Pink Universes Die Really Quickly (mostly about FadeCandy). Micah mentioned Boldport and the kit-of-the-month club. (Video of her building the first one!) Also: the BigClive channel on YouTube. Thank you to Planet.com for sponsoring the contest. Check out Planet.com/careers!

Philip Freidin (@PhilipFreidin) spoke with us about his BLE platform OSHChip, debuggers, and consulting. Planet Labs is sponsoring a contest! Hit the contact link to enter. Also check out their careers page and apply to embeddedfm@planet.com. Both the OSHChip and the CMSIS-DAP SWD programming module are on Philip's Tindie store. While Keil is the suggested compiler for now, you can also use mbed (tutorial). The system is wholly open source, you can find everything at github.com/oshchip. (Philip gave an HDDG talk about OSHChip; we didn't talk about it but I thought it was interesting.) Philip's company is Fliptronics. Under Tips and Tricks, that site has his advice on consulting.

Kelly McEvers (@kellymcevers) joins us to talk about the definition of embedded. Kelly McEvers is one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon news magazine. She is also the host of a new podcast called Embedded which takes a story from the news and goes much deeper into it. Her Embedded podcast launches on March 31st. Subscribe now on iTunes, listen on NPR.com or your favorite podcast app. Kelly's Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent's Dilemma is an amazing listen. Kelly mentioned her interview of a drone pilot, Lt. Col. T. Mark McCurley, author of Hunter Killer. She also interviewed Sarah Pennypacker, author of Pax. Elecia does not squee on air. But it was a near thing.