Stay ConnectedI am Elecia White alongside Christopher White. We’re here to chat about the interests, careers, and lives of engineers, artists, educators and makers. Our diverse guest list includes names you may have heard and engineers working quietly in the trenches. Either way, they are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and inspiring.
We’d love to share our enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM).
Copyright: © 2013-2023 Logical Elegance, Inc.
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 on EngineerGirl.org, a site that lets young women ask questions of women in the engineering profession.
Elecia has been working on a typing robot named Ty, documented on the Embedded.fm blog. It uses a MeArm, on sale in July 2017 at Hackaday.com, with coupon noted in show. (don't use PayPal to check out or you can't apply the coupon).
Other robots for trying out robots: Lego Mindstorms (lots of books, project ideas, and incredible online tutorials!), Cozmobot, Dash and Dot. Some robotics competition leagues include Vex, Botball, and FIRST.
This week, we mix things up a bit. This joint show with the Don't Panic Geocast. This episode explores what happens when electrical engineering meets geoscience in cold places. We're joined by guest Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Penn State to talk about geopebbles, ice, climate, and more!
Fun Paper Friday: The Boring Company
This week we talked to Addie (@atdiy) and Whisker (@whixr), the Toymakers (@Tymkrs). They make electronics kits, videos, and conference badges.
Toymakers site (tymkrs.com) has a link to their IRC channel, videos, and Tindie store(including those amazing heart simulators, the easy to make Amplify Me, and Protosynth Midi).
Their reddit community is r/Tymkrs. It has a lot more information about the CypherCon 2017 badges. More about CypherCon at cyphercon.com.
Some of their ZombieTech podcast is available on YouTube (along with First Spin and Patch Bay, see the playlists to find grouped series). Note that Rabbithole is the name of their hackspace as well as the video series documenting project creation. Episode 200 has the violin we discussed.
We seem to have talked about a lot of other people on the show, especially shared friends and past Embedded.fm guests (some of whom were on ZombieTech).
Some fiction for you:
Phoenix Perry (@phoenixperry) spoke with us about physical games. Phoenix is CTO of DoItKits (@DoItKits) and
More about Phoenix:
Physical games are sometimes called Alt Ctrl such as at the Alt Ctrl Game Jam.
Phoenix co-founded Code Liberation with Nina Freeman (http://ninasays.so/) and Jane Friedhoff (http://janefriedhoff.com/). "Code Liberation catalyzes the creation of digital games and creative technologies by women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to diversify STEAM fields." There is an 8-part workshop in London in Summer 2017 (more info).
Some other interesting people:
How to Get What You Want wearables site
I know you only read the show notes because you wanted this link: Velastat LessEMF has the supplies for ghost hunting!
Charlie Ladd (@csladd) joined us to give an overview of good hardware practices.
The oil quality sensor is from VSI Oil.
Recent fiction included Ready Player One, John Scalzi, and Matthew Mather.
To stay current, Charlie reviews the trade magazines: EEWeb.com, EDN, ECN, and EETimes.
A junior engineer's tale of woe.
Professor Alex Dean spoke with us about his ARM embedded systems books and @NCState courses.
Alex's page in North Carolina State University's department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
His book is Embedded Systems Fundamentals with Arm Cortex M Based Microcontrollers: A Practical Approach (ecopy available from the ARM Media site). It uses the FRDM-KL25Z as the example board throughout the text.
Alex also co-authored Embedded Systems, An Introduction Using the Renesas RX62N
His favorite RTOS is Keil RTX.
We also mentioned about Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin and Flush by Carl Hiaasen
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:
Episodes cited as favorites:
Tools discussed:
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
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.
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