Embedded

Christopher and Elecia chat about the Hackaday prize, Unity class (and their games), the blog, hams, and IDEs. Embedded.fm blog posts we discussed: Chris wrote about ham radio practice tests and his plane's maiden flight. Elecia is working her way through her book about taking apart toys. Chris Svec is taking a microprocessors approach in Embedded Systems 101. And Andrei's current Embedded Wednesdays posts have been about number format and accelerometer output. Sign up for the Embedded.fm newsletter to get blog content in your email box. Hackaday Prize! Yay! Sign up early and often. Chris and Elecia have been taking a Unity course on Udemy (pricing becomes more sensible after April 1). Elecia's game is live for the next 30 days, you can play it from your computer's browser (but not Chrome). Audio "enhances" the experience. Also: you were warned. Atomic Game Engine is another game engine but open source. Justin has 8 reels of 800 of Atmel AT32UC3A3256S-ALVR. Let us know if you'd like to be connected. Elecia liked the Ed Emberley Make A World drawing book. Bipedal robots at RobotShop.com for software programming or SparkFun's Redbot kit for more hardware oriented fun. If you missed last year's April Fools Embedded.fm: The Elon Musk of Earth. Feel free to listen to it again on April 1 as there will be no such gag this year.

Dan Luu (@danluu) spoke with us about processor features, startups vs large companies, error handling, and computer science research. Dan's blog is danluu.com. Some posts we talked about: CPU features since 1980 Working at Startups vs. Large Companies Recurring Postmorten Lessons Efficacy of Computer Science Research Areas Dan mentioned some conference proceedings he monitors. For computer architecture: ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA): http://isca2016.eecs.umich.edu/ IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Microprogramming & Microarchitecture (MICRO): http://www.microarch.org/ High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA): http://www.hpcaconf.org/ For software engineering: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): http://www.icse-conferences.org/ Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE): http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/fse2016/ He also mentioned Operating System Design and Implementation OSDI: https://www.usenix.org/conferences/byname/179

Sarah Petkus offers to let her robot lick Christopher's leg. Christopher agrees reluctantly once we determine the saliva will be anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. Sarah is a kinetic artist and some of her projects include a robot army (built your own from parts printed out or purchased at robot-army.com), Noodlefeet, and Carl (the flamingo of pendulum inversion). Her Zoness.com site is an umbrella for her drawn and robotic art. Specifically, you may enjoy her webcomic Gravity Roads, her YouTube channel, and/or her Robotic Arts blog. Some other topics we discussed: Sarah got into mechatronics at her time as SAIC. Festo's air jellyfish on youtube Algodoo.com 2d physics simulator Woodgears.ca for 3d printable gears Also, please check out our new embedded.fm/blog or if you prefer email updates, sign up at embedded.fm/subscribe.

Julia Evans (@b0rk) spoke with us about using profile analysis to debug programs. Her PyCon 2015 talk was Systems Programming as a Swiss Army Knife (video). Julia's blog is jvns.ca. Some of the posts we discussed include: Have High Expectations for Computers How I Got Better at Debugging perf top: An Awesome Way to Spy on CPU Usage Julia's favorite conference to speak at is Bang Bang Con in New York City, May 7-8, 2016. Coincidentally, the call for proposals is open. Also, please check out the Embedded.fm/blog!

Andrew "Bunnie" Huang spoke with us about manufacturing in China, writing books, and crowdfunding. Bunnie's new book is The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen. It is available via crowdsupply and the price goes from $30 to $35 when pre-ordering ends on March 17, 2016. Bunnie's blog is at www.bunniestudios.com, many of his professional projects can be found at www.kosagi.com including more information about the Novena open source laptop. Hacking the XBox is available for free from No Starch Press.

Andrei Chichak and Chris Svec join us to talk about our new blog: Embedded.fm/blog (!!). Andrei was on 114: Wild While Loops, about error handling, as well 99: You Can Say A Boat, about MISRA-C. Andrei has been teaching Embedded Wednesdays, an embedded systems class for the Edmonton New Technology Society. It uses the STM32F401C-Discovery board. His course materials are on his site (chichak.ca). Chris was on 78: Happy Cows, about empathy driven development. He's also working on a different embedded systems introduction (Embedded Software Engineering 101). His blog is chrissvec.com. Our new blog will include their coursework, excepts from Elecia's new book on taking apart toys, project notes from Christopher, and various other news.

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) answer listener questions about BASIC and their meet-cute story. (Sadly those are unrelated. That would have been cute.) Dennis Jackson at Airware is looking for a senior EE and an EE technician. Contact us and we'll connect you to Dennis so he knows to look out for you. Dennis' episode was 94: Don't Be Clever about drones, simple code, and learning. As for other interviews, Elecia was on The Amp Hour and The Engineering Commons Podcast. Elecia and Chris were both on The Amp Hour's 256th show.

Dan Saks answers many questions about C++ in embedded systems: where it works, where it doesn't, and a path to getting started. Dan Saks is the founder and president of Saks & Associates. He was a columnist for The C/C++ Users Journal, Embedded Systems Design and several other publications. He also served as secretary of the ANSI and ISO C++ standards committee in its early years. We touched on some of his articles: Poor reasons for rejecting C++ Preventing dynamic allocation Calling constructors with placement new Andrei suggested Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, Seventh Edition by Siddhartha Rao as a good primer for experienced C programmers reluctantly learning C++. Like robots? Check out the job postings at iRobot. If you like what you see, email Chris Svec. (Yes, the guy who was on 78: Happy Cows.) Contest for Making Embedded Systems will end Feb 5, 2016.

Inventor and Youtube-er, Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) tells us about building robots to "help" her daily life. Simone's YouTube Channel. Some of the videos discussed in the show: Chopping Machine VLOG and its TV commercial (Also: the servo motors used) Listener Feedback with TENS machine Wake up machine Simone's blog, with additional robot build details is at simonegiertz.com. For relaxation, Simone visits the Hello Denizen YouTube channel and watches hamsters eating gourmet meals. She also mentioned her preferred Reddit feed. Like robots? Check out the job postings at iRobot. If you like what you see, email Chris Svec. (Yes, the guy who was on 78: Happy Cows.) Contest for Making Embedded Systems will end Feb 5, 2016.

Anh Bui, Vice President of @Benetech Labs, joined us to discuss using technology for good. Benetech is most widely known for Bookshare, an online library for people with print disabilities. Note that this is only open to people with print disabilities per the Chafee Amendment (copyright exceptions with cause). There are some public domain books you can search through on the site. Martus is another of Benetech's core programs, in their human rights and civil liberties program. It is an open source, secure information collection and management tool. Poet Image Description Tool is a Benetech tool to aid in making visuals more accessible to everyone. Some accessibility guidelines and techniques: W3 Web design accessibility Apple's many accessibility resources POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) website design article Enabling The Future is the group that 3D prints prosthetic limbs.The Dean Kamen water filtration system is called Slingshot. Hackaday Prize (2016 announcement is coming!) For more information about the embedded software position at Avid Identification Systems, please hit the contact link or email show@embedded.fm so we can put you in touch with the right people.

Eric Hankinson (@Kumichou) tells us about the new embedded software components of Contextual Electronics. There is a 10% coupon announced in the show, good until June. CE uses the ST-Nucleo-F030R8 board. Eric's blog is www.erichankinson.com and his day job is at LeanDog. The Amp Hour episode with Chris and Elecia is 281: Crossovers and Call-ins Sealand

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) inflict lightning round on each other, talk about their new favorite toys, and get momentarily serious about performance reviews. Elecia is looking for a datasheet for the SunPlus SPHE8104GW. Not the 8200. This is not something Google-able. It probably requires knowing the right person, but if you do (or if you are the right person), please help. Tickle is the IOS app to program the Sphero BB-8 (and many other robots) in the kids programming language Scratch Laser Stars Indoor Light Show Automatic: BLE car monitoring The Cheerson CX-10 is the base model quadcopter Elecia and Chris have been playing with. They flew a CX-10C with its 0.3MP video camera off a cliff at beach (but it didn't record the video). Elecia's self-evaluation for 2014 year is on her blog Python library for mashing binaries into other forms is IntelHex Elecia couldn't find the .map file scripts she was thinking of though one on stackoverflow was pretty close

FIRST Robotics is way to get students of all ages into robotics. Former participant and dedicated mentor, Michael Hill (@Michael_A_Hill) tells us about FIRST and how we can get involved. Official site: FIRSTInspires.org which also has a list of volunteer roles and qualifications Forums are at ChiefDelphi.com This year's theme is FIRST STRONGHOLD and was designed in collaboration with Disney. There is a trailer on YouTube (expect castles!). One of the NI control units is the RIO Robot. Micheal's team is Innovators Robotics. Chris and Elecia will be helping out on The Amp Hour call in show, recording January 6,2015. If you'd like to chat, hit our contact link or email feedback@theamphour.com. Please include your name, location, Skype name and what you hope to discuss on air.

Sarah and Abi Hodsdon speak with us about being a maker family. Sarah's site and blog are Sarahndipitous Designs, her twitter handle is @sarahndipitous. The online K-12 school they use is Connections Academy. Making Makers by AnnMarie Thomas is a book about encouraging kids toward making. Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle is an excellent addition to any library. Giwishes is a massive global scavenger hunt. Some learning sites the Hodsdon's recommend include: Code Academy Kahn Academy Instructables For e-textiles and wearables, they recommend: Lynne Bruning's eTextile Lounge Becky Stern Leah Buechley's Sew Electric book

Alvaro Prieto (@alvaroprieto) spoke with us about laser turrets, tearing down quadcopters, flux capacitors, the moon, and culture at work. Alvaro's blog Alvaro's github repositories including Proto-X quadcopter information, Silta bus monitoring, and Skype video message exporter for OSX. One of the inspirations for taking apart the Proto-X was watching Micah talk about her Coastermelt project. We talked to her about it on episode 101: Taking Apart the Toaster. One of his reasons for going to Planet Labs was knowing Shaun Meehan, check out his Amp Hour interview. Demon by Daniel Suarez Video of Supercon talk on laser shooting robots Podcast Award nominations open in early 2016