Embedded Logical Elegance

Chris and Elecia talk about the Embedded Online Conference, their experience learning Zephyr, and some listener questions.
Elecia will be presenting on Creating Chaos and Hard Faults at the Embedded Online Conference, Apr 29 - May 3, 2024. Some other talks that look interesting:
The Power of a Look-up Table by Nathan Jones
Zephyr Tools To Debug Hardware by Chris Gammell
Breaking Good: Why Virtual Hardware Prefers Rough Handling by Uri Shaked
Beyond Coding: Toward Software Development Expertise by Marian Petre
Use the EMBEDDEDFM coupon for a discount (or if your whole team is going, check out the group discounts).
Elecia’s book (Making Embedded Systems, 2nd Edition) is shipping (Amazon or Bookshop.org).
Zephyr is pretty amazing. 
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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 110 (Wikipedia) which can be implemented with logic gates (AND, OR, NOT). These logic gates can be implemented as creases in paper (with the direction of the crease indicating 0 or 1). 
The paper describing the proof is called Flat Origami is Turing Complete (arxiv and PDF). Quanta Magazine has a summary article: How to Build an Origami Computer.
Inna’s page at Cornell University also has the crease patterns for the logic gates (pdf).
Inna is an aficionado of the origami work by Satoshi Kamiya who creates complex and lifelike patterns. 
Some other origami mentioned:
Origami Stegosaurus by John Montroll YouTube Folding video (Part 1 of 3)
Ilan Garibi’s Pineapple Tessellation (PDF instructions)
Eric Gjerde Spread Hex Origami Tessellation (This also has the equilateral triangle grid needed to fold Inna’s gate logic)
Peter Engel
Amanda Ghassaei’s Origami Simulator (Mooser’s is under Examples->Origami)
Some other math mentioned:
Veritasium’s Math's Fundamental Flaw talks about Goerthe’s Incompleteness Theorem
Physical Logic Game: Turing Tumble - Build Marble-Powered Computers
Mathematics of Paper Folding (Wikipedia)
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Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded

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 published Understanding Checksums and Cyclic Redundancy Checks. He’s better known for Better Embedded System Software as well as his two books about safety and autonomous vehicles:
The UL 4600 Guidebook: What to Include in an Autonomous Vehicle Safety Case
How Safe Is Safe Enough?: Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety
Phil’s YouTube page has a number of videos with great visuals to go along with his books. He also has three(!) blogs:
Safe Autonomy 
Better Embedded System SW
Checksum and CRC Central (including a post on checksum speed comparison)
Currently, Phil is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (his page there). You can follow him on LinkedIn. 
Elecia read (and give 2.5 stars to) Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature by Marcus du Sautoy: “Interesting but uneven, I kept reading to find out what horrible things math profs do to their children in the name of fun. Worth it when I finally got to a small section with Claude Shannon (and Richard Hamming). It didn’t help with this podcast but it was neat.”
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Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.

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, Google Play and where you get your ebooks. The paper copy will be out in about two weeks, you can preorder now. It is also available on the O’Reilly Learning System, here is a  30-day Trial.

See the Embedded.fm Origami and Flex PCBs newsletter, sign up for future newsletters here. 

Memfault is hosting its first launch week of the year! On Tuesday, March 12th, Memfault CEO François Baldassari will showcase how to evaluate the health and performance of your embedded devices clearly within Memfault's observability platform. Join the webinar to discover how simple it is to monitor three necessary device measures: stability, battery, and connectivity. Register today!

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, and electronic manufacturing. 
See the Electrosmith website, specifically the Daisy Seed. The electro-smith github repository is extensive (with many Daisy Examples). Also see their YouTube channel. Electrosmith is offering 5% off until mid-March for folks with the coupon code mentioned in the show.
We mentioned a number of synths but the CHOMPI is particularly nifty.
Daisy Bell - Wikipedia (and where you might have heard that before (and if that doesn’t give “teach computers to sing” a creepy vibe, I don’t know what will)).
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Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.

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 about attending or presenting. Early bird tickets are available for a limited time! Teardown is put on by Crowd Supply, a company that helps hardware companies launch products.
Hardware Happy Hour Portland is a regular meetup that Helen organizes. Helen will be hosting a meetup in Oakland, CA, USA on Feb 15: Oakland Sound Hackers. She is also hosting a San Francisco, CA meetup on March 6: Open Hardware Happy Hour. 
Helen’s personal site is helenleigh.me. She has been on the show twice before in 355: Favorite Ways to Make Noises and 261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds.
Transcript

Memfault is making software the most reliable part of the IoT with its device reliability platform that enables teams to be more proactive with remote debugging, monitoring and OTA update capabilities. Try Memfault's new sandbox demo at demo.memfault.com. Embedded.fm listeners receive 25% off their first-year contract with Memfault by booking a demo here: https://go.memfault.com/demo-request-embedded