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Where to start?

October 16, 2013

I got a message from someone who read my book. He said he enjoyed it (yay!) but  was disappointed it was mostly theoretical (boo!), and didn’t recommend a specific chip and give some tutorials on how to start using it. He asked if a $500 class would be a good way to get started. His background is software (I’d suggest different things for a hardware engineer but that’s a different post).

This seemed like a neat question so I answered and I figured I’d tell you my answer too, with a few only a few mods:

The chips change so fast that a book would be out of date before it was published. The class might be a good way to get started though, really, I’d say spend $50 on an Arduino board and build yourself a fancy Christmas light (or, if you’ve got time now, a Halloween scar-ifier of some ilk).

Arduinos have Atmel chips, usually the Atmega, a line of chips that is used in many shipping products. The community is huge so you won’t be learning alone. And the accessories for ti are amazing. You can start out in their C++ environment but strip it down to a microprocessor system and your own drivers if/when you are ready.

Another good source of software-to-embedded boards are the ones from mbed.org. They cost a little more but do some of the underlying drivers for you (and don’t make you fuss with cross compilers). They have more processing power (a lot more) so you’d get to see the ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 which are the hot processors in the 32-bit space.

Maybe look at Electric Imp. They’ve got a neat system that lets you hook wifi and cloud services to lots of things. They do some embedded and it isn’t necessarily something you could build a career on but to stick your toe in, well, hooking your oven to the internet has never been easier. 🙂

Finally, lots of people love Raspberry Pi (and Beagle Bone Black). I see those more as Linux computers with a few limitations than proper embedded platforms. But maybe that is a good way to transition.

Circuit Cellar Ink is a good magazine. So is MAKE. They both will let you see what processors people are talking about and using in hobby stuff. Or look on the adafruit.com, makershed.com or sparkfun.com tutorials pages.

For more professional development (less hobby fun), contact TI, ST, Atmel or NXP and ask when they’ll have training in your area. Many times the training is free (and they give out dev kits!)… essentially you are letting them brainwash you to use their parts. But they all have good processors so no harm done. The embedded systems conference (DesignWest) isn’t until March 2014 but that is a good place to see all the vendors in one place (San Jose, CA).

Does that give you enough places to start?

I have a podcast (http://embedded.fm/), some of the shows cover how to get started with one thing or another though, again, those are starting points, not in-depth discussions.

Let me know how you get on.

…

And if you, dear reader of my blog, use any of this advice or want to suggest other things, please let me know.

 

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BART strike leads to train jokes

October 10, 2013

In an SF office email list, there was the warning that with a BART strike possible, people may want to make sure they can work from home.

Someone suggested working in a bar, I replied that a meeting there might help an ongoing problem. Another person piped up “I like this train of thought.”

Was the pun intended? (BART… train, see?) I don’t know but it reminded me of another train joke, once told me to over three days (an hour a day).

There was a guy who always wanted to drive trains, to be the railroad engineer. But he came of age in the 1960s, the job was dying out. Over the course of the next twenty years, he got laid off by Amtrak and then by Union Pacific. He moved his family to San Francisco and drove the trolleys, yelling “All aboard!” for the tourists. But, inevitably it seems, he was laid off of that job too.

His family was kicked out of their apartment and had nowhere to go. Our train enthusiast had no more options so he turned to a life of crime. He robbed a bank. The first one went ok. The second ended in disaster as an accomplice shot a police officer and then cut a plea deal with the district attorney.

Our engineer got the death sentence: the electric chair. He went through the standard appeals but felt so guilty he didn’t put much heart into it. It was terrible. On the night of his execution, he asked for his wife’s macaroni and cheese.

But when they pulled the lever, nothing happened. Back to his cell he went.

They tried again a week later. This time, as a final meal, he had his wife’s mac and cheese, with lobster bits.

The electrician had been to increase the juice to the chair. When they pulled the lever, a city block worth of lights went out, but nothing happened. Back to his cell he went.

A week later, he enjoyed his wife’s mac and cheese, with lobster bits and an excellent glass of red wine.

The electrician had been, and again increased the juice to the chair. When they pulled the lever, the whole city’s lights went out, but nothing happened. This time, the governor granted a stay of execution, releasing the man saved due to divine intervention.

When released, the press asked what had happened, how was this possible? He gave a simple press statement: I was never a very good conductor.

 

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An email to a coworker regarding instant messaging

September 27, 2013

I asked why he was never online. He replied:

The [group IM program's] notifications have trained me to ignore it since the notification are from someone who has sent an ALL message. For me, [it] is as effective closed as it is open. Is there a better way to use it? The thing I cannot have is interruptions every few minutes.

I left it alone for nearly a week, it wasn't important. But it mattered so I decided to write up the following.

If we worked in the same office, I would occasionally come up to your desk and ask if you had a minute. Then, if you said yes, we'd have a conversation that was back and forth (and often more friendly) than via email.

We don't work in the same office but IM gives us the opportunity to have conversations. I don't mind sending you emails but sometimes it is easier to have a faster flow of back and forth for little issues.

For example, if you were on IM today, I'd have asked the questions about schematic revisions I sent over email (and probably spent less time wondering if it was something broken on my end). Actually, if you were on IM, I probably would have asked that two days ago since I put it off until I was sure I couldn't figure it out on my own.

Another example: last week, I sent you two lists of schematic issues. If you'd been on IM, I would have asked if each one made sense, about an hour after sending them… since you didn't see the second one until I asked why the modifications were absent, in a group meeting, that would have been useful. Actually, [another EE at this company] and I have done the whole review via IM so he could clarify each point as I was making them (and fix them while I went to look for others). That was probably the best not-in-person review I've ever been part of.

Sure, it provides interruptions but you can always ignore or turn it off for a few hours when you are working on something hard. Having it on and available is like having an open office door. I won't interrupt you for stupid crap (unless I'm in a “let's not work, let's play nerf wars” sort of mood but that is pretty seldom since I'm a contractor, and even then you can close your virtual door).

This IM program is a part of this company's culture. I understand not liking the interruptions but urge you to give it a try for a few days, see if the benefits outweigh the annoyances.

I'm done with my soapbox. 🙂

My coworker appeared on IM today. I hope it works for him.

 

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Forecasting from the Tesla

September 15, 2013

C and I were driving to the beach yesterday and started talking about the future of technology. We don’t normally do this, while we will talk about clients in our off time, we don’t just gab about tech so this was special.

Here are some of the things we decided while driving about:

  1. Virtual reality is neat and it is really, truly, finally coming. I’ll be able to put on a helmet and see a different world, be able to put virtual objects in places and move through them instead of working in a two dimensional environment. Our brains are wired for this: we are supposed to live in a 3D world. When this happens, the whole world will accelerate (again) as we share our mindscapes with other people. Motion sensitive people beware (that would be me, I get carsick just by thinking about being in a car).
  2. Augmented reality, where you see the real world with information overlaid on it, is also coming. The physical world will become a playground, mashed up with our mental models. Google glass is dorktastic but only the start.
  3. To get AR and VR to really work, we need to interact with the items that are not really there. Haptic feedback must come soon, driven by the virtual environments. C wants a glove that will make him believe he is holding a tennis ball when he is wearing an Occulus Rift VR headset. We talked about balance muscle wires, small solenoids (to put pressure on the fingertips), and those bed of nails things you see at museum stores with actuators.
  4. The iphone’s new 64 bit architecture is strange and interesting. Why does it need that much computing power? What purpose does it serve?
    1. First, the oomph will make it more usable as an enterprise (and government) device. It has three factor authentication now (something you have: the phone; something you know: a password; something you are: your fingerprint… and probably your voiceprint).
    2. The new iphone 64 bit architecture is on the path to the phone replacing computers. Now all they need is a generic dock (one for work, one for home) that has a keyboard and display. Then all your computer information comes and goes with you, all the time. No more laptops. No more computers. Your phone is everything, including your ID.
    3. Finally, the additional iphone computing power comes into play as a game console (like Wii, Playstation, even PCs). Add a game controller, plug the iphone into your TV, and have a serious physics engine simulate a system with intelligent agents.
  5. Energy harvesting is neat. We used to have it with solar powered calculators but now our devices are too powerful (and power hungry). The harvesting technology is coming, probably over the next five years. I think it will hit consumers in augmentation of battery devices (making them last longer), not eliminating batteries entirely. We agree that energy harvesting is more interesting in small, pervasive devices; it is less interesting in large scale energy generation where more traditional sources will continue to improve (e.g. wind, solar).

 

We’ll see how these turn out. And what are we missing?

 

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Why I podcast

September 13, 2013

A couple times, after we stop recording, people have asked why I have a podcast. I need a better answer than I currently have. This is all going to be stream-of-conscious as I sort out the reason and come up with an answer.

The podcast started as a way to learn something new. I was going to do a half dozen shows so I could understand how recording worked. It was a replacement for my normal community-center classes on stained glass, soldering, clay, hula hooping, laser cutting, woodshop, bookbinding, etc.

We’re way beyond six shows and I’m starting to make plans for people three months out: I’m going to be doing this for awhile. I need a better answer to the why question.

Let’s see… It isn’t “to give back”, I hear that reason from other people but I don’t feel that motivation myself.  “To share my passion with other people” is closer. I really like engineering and building things. I want other people to come and play in this lovely sandbox.

I suppose that dovetails into my other reason, “I like people to share their passion with me”. Wow, that kinda came out wrong. And now that I’ve seen that, I look back to the other and snicker. Oh, go ahead and snicker, might as well laugh with me instead of making me go it alone.

Do you ever have those moments when everything is snicker worthy?

Back to topic!

Ehn, let’s circle around and see if I can put this another way.

I like Sports Night, the TV sitcom about running a sports TV show. It is smart and funny. But what I liked best is that the people on the show loved their jobs. Their jobs were annoying, sometimes dumb, sometimes hard. They were jobs. But the characters loved doing them. A common thread with my TV habits is that I like watching happy people do neat things.

Do you see where I’m headed?

I like doing the show because people share their passion, enthusiasm, amusement, happiness, spark of ingenuity, whatever-it-is, with me. I think this is a solid reason and accounts for about half of “why”.

I’m a little shy so I need a way to engage with people, especially in this way. I need the cover of the show to be able to go up to the head of content at EETimes and say “talk to me?”. Or to have a serious (semi-serious) talk about going to Mars with a woman I’ve never met. Or to have a good friend talk about his views on engineering without it seeming like makework.

There is another, subtler reason. I’m a proponent of women in technology (and science). I’ve heard from many sources that a lack of role models causes women to give up too easily. And I’ve seen how never having met a female engineer has warped some folks sense of the possible. I make sure to get a big cast of female engineers on my show. If we’ve have two males guests in a row, I start mining my women-in-tech contacts to make sure the trend doesn’t continue. It hasn’t been that difficult. Really.

To sum up, why I do a podcast, in order of importance:

  • To talk to people who love their jobs
  • To share my passion for engineering
  • To promote the visibility of women in engineering

Huh, ok. Those are good reasons. I don’t need to introspect any deeper. Oh, and in case our accountant reads my blog:

 

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