Natalie Silvanovich (@natashenka) discussed reverse engineering hardware, working on security software, and the fantastic world of Tamagotchis. Natalie's site and blog Hardware Excuse Generator Original CCC 2012 talk: Many Tamagotchis Were H

207: I Love My Robot Monkey Head

1 Jul 5th, 2017 1h

Professor Ayanna Howard of Georgia Tech joins us to talk about robotics including how androids interact with humans. Some of her favorite robot include the Darwin, the Nao, and, for home-hacking, the Darwin Mini. Ayanna has a profile o

204: Abuse Electricity

1 Jun 14th, 2017 55m 11s

Phoenix Perry (@phoenixperry) spoke with us about physical games. Phoenix is CTO of DoItKits (@DoItKits) and More about Phoenix: Bot Party Her site: PhoenixPerry.com Goldsmith’s page She enjoyed Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin Physical games

30: Eventually Lightning Strikes

Dec 11th, 2013 56m 17s

James Grenning (@jwgrenning) joined Elecia to talk about how to be a good programmer using Test Driven Development (TDD). James' excellent book on how to use TDD: Test Driven Development for Embedded Systems Take a class from Renaissance Softw

It's All Chaos and Horror

12 days ago 1h 11m

Logic gates and origami? Professor Inna Zakharevich joined us to talk about Turing complete origami crease patterns. We started talking about Turing completeness which led to a Conway’s Game of Life-like 2D cellular automaton called Rule 11

Math Is Not the Answer

26 days ago 1h 10m

Philip Koopman joined us to talk about how modulo 255 vs 256 makes a huge difference in checksum error detection, how to get the most out of your checksum or CRC, and why understanding how they work is worth the effort. Philip has recently

Field of Boxes

Mar 7th, 2024 1h 2m

Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition came out today! Chris and Elecia talk about the changes, the writing, but not the eldritch horror. Then we talk about pianos and origami. The electronic version is available now on Amazon, ebooks.com, Goo

Bicycle Built For Two

Feb 22nd, 2024 58m 30s

Where electronics meets music, there is a board called Daisy. Created by ElectroSmith, Andrew Ikenberry, the goal of the board is to teach computers to sing. Andrew joined us to talk about music, audio processing, instruments, product design, a

Upping the Chaos Level

Feb 9th, 2024 1h 16m

Helen Leigh joined us to talk about putting together conferences (including Teardown 2024), indie hardware producers (including via Crowd Supply), and building communities. Teardown will be June 21-23 in Portland, OR, USA. More information abou

Saving the World Is Not a Hobby

Jan 28th, 2024 1h 4m

Chris and Elecia chat with each other about motor encoder reading methods, conferences coming up, soldering irons, schematic reviews, looking for a new job, and general life. Some conferences coming up in the embedded space: Embedded Online,

Designed to Kill All Humans

Jan 12th, 2024 56m 49s

Anders Nielsen joined us to talk about why the 6502 is the best processor. Anders also sells 65uino kits on his store: imania.dk. For more explanation of what they are, how they work, attaching peripherals, and programming in assembly, look at

Temporary Axolotl

Dec 29th, 2023 52m 30s

Chris and Elecia talk about cars, fleeting moments of fame, their year, and the sorry state of tools in the embedded space. Chris became internet famous for asking a car dealership’s chatbot (powered by ChatGPT) to generate Python code for flui

466: Attacked by a Goose on the Way to the Office

Dec 14th, 2023 1h 8m

Ralph Hempel spoke with us about the development of Lego Mindstorms from hacking the initial interface to running Debian Linux as well as programming Mindstorms in Python. Happy 25th birthday to Lego Mindstorms! Pybricks is a MicroPython based

Dinosaurs, Pirates, Spaceships

Dec 1st, 2023 1h 5m

Yanina Bellini Saibene joined us to discuss teaching, localization, barriers to learning coding, and global communities. Yani works on Teach Tech Together (https://teachtogether.tech/) with Greg Wilson. It is a fantastic resource if you are le

Please Make This Monster Look Scary

Nov 16th, 2023 58m 59s

Chris and Elecia talk about their favorite processors, their breakfast preferences, large language model ethics, presents, and Eeyore's birthday. Elecia’s new edition of her book Making Embedded Systems is finished! (Except for a couple

Layers of Band-Aids

Nov 2nd, 2023 56m 21s

Kevin Lannen is an embedded systems engineer making powered wheelchairs safer. This sounded interesting to us. Kevin works at LUCI Mobility (luci.com). Check out their tear jerker introduction video as well as technical description of over-the-

Spontaneously High Performing

Oct 19th, 2023 1h 15m

Marian Petre spoke to us about her research on how to make software developers better at developing software. Marian is an Emeritus Professor of the School of Computing & Communications at the Open University in the United Kingdom. She also has

Am I the Cow in This Scenario?

Oct 5th, 2023 58m 46s

Chris and Elecia discuss the pros and cons of completing one project or starting a dozen. Elecia’s 2nd edition of Making Embedded Systems is coming out in March. (Preview is on O’Reilly’s Learning System.) She’s working on a companion reposit

I Don’t Care What Your Math Says

Sep 28th, 2023 1h 19m

Author, engineer, manager, and professor, Dr. Greg Wilson joined Elecia to talk about teaching, science in computer science, ethics, and policy. The request for curriculum that started the conversation was the Cost of Change, part of NeverWorkI

Ideas Have to Come From Somewhere

Sep 14th, 2023 1h 17m

Professor AnnMarie Thomas spoke with us about playful learning through joy, whimsy, surprise, and meeting new people. We also spoke with AnnMarie about how adults can foster an environment that encourages innovation. See more about that (and

Fiddling, DIY, and Cursing

Aug 31st, 2023 1h 11m

Trond Snekvik spoke with us about developing VSCode extensions and Bluetooth meshes. Trond is a Staff Software Engineer at Nordic Semiconductor. Nordic’s Visual Studio Code Extensions include device tree and kconfig support for the Zephyr proj

Rubber Duck Phase Cancellation

Aug 17th, 2023 1h 12m

Chris and Elecia chat about their ongoing efforts to create and learn. Then they answer some listener questions. Duck quacks do echo but the echoes seem to align in phase so that there is no interruption making the echo sounds like an extensio

Left Right Symmetry of a Banana

Aug 3rd, 2023 1h 8m

Damien George spoke with us about developing with and for MicroPython while Elecia tries not to spill all the secrets about her client. To start at the beginning, you probably want to check out micropython.org. Wait, no, one step back. Before l

Snaps!

Jul 20th, 2023 53m 40s

Natalie Friedman joins us to discuss when, where, how, and why robots should wear clothing. Natalie is a PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. Natalie’s website is natalie-friedman.com and you can find her papers in the research section. She has an I

Printf Hello

Jul 6th, 2023 1h 15m

Uri Shaked surprises us with a chat about silicon design when we were expecting to talk about a web-based board simulator. If you want to try your hand at silicon design, check out Tiny Tapeout, a way to possibly get your design on to real sil