537: Quiet Time Innovation

Christopher and Elecia catch up on life, firmware consulting, daydreams, and projects.  Elecia thinks aloud about low-stimulation education toys. Christopher shares his experience using AI tools to build a custom Swift metronome app to train off-beat timing, specifically how he turned the project into a structured language lesson plan. They discuss using Google's NotebookLM on the Embedded.fm transcripts, award wins, handling guest self-invites, contract engineering advice for high schoolers, security key vulnerabilities, and how moving from desktop to embedded requires viewing your hardware as your framework.  Discussion Resources & Links Embedded.fm LLM – Search and query all past Embedded.fm show notes, blog posts, and transcripts Hasbro Women Innovators of Play – Toy design challenge encouraging women-led innovations Mermaid Live Editor – Text-based diagramming and flowchart tool for Markdown documentation eMudhra & GoAhead Vulnerability Overview – Security issues surrounding public key infrastructure, TLS, and embedded web server DHE cipher secrets Transcript

David Such joins us to discuss his new book, Embedded AI: Intelligence at the Deep Edge. We explore the boundary between classical signal processing, heuristics, and edge machine learning; IMU processing and sensor fusion; and how to determine what sort of ML fits on your processor. David also shares his experiences writing for No Starch Press and why future robotic architectures need a digital cerebellum for low-level reflexes. David Such is an electrical engineer based in Sydney. He is the director of Reefwing Software. DISCUSSION RESOURCES & LINKS David's Website & Book Resources: Embedded AI: Intelligence at the Deep Edge (No Starch Press, on Amazon) Embedded AI GitHub Repository Embedded AI Newsletter SignupReefwing Software Website Reefwing Software on Medium Technologies & Frameworks Mentioned: Sensor Fusion, Kalman filters, Mahoney filters, and quaternions for IMU processing TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers & Edge Impulse Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2040 PIO and DMA engines for high-speed signal processing Syntiant neural processing chips (Arduino Nicla Voice) MicroPython for embedded scripting and test automation Book Giveaway & Discount Code: No Starch Press is giving away two print copies of Embedded AI (US/Canada residents). Entry rules are in the show, due by Nov 1, 2026. There is also a coupon for the book good through Nov 5, 2026.

Adam Smith from UC Santa Cruz joins us to discuss local Small Language Models (SLMs) and building open, autonomous tools. We explore his BayLeaf AI counterplatform, transagency (the "me-and-the-car" concept of human-agent collaboration), context distillation, and running models locally without relying on data-harvesting corporate clouds.  Adam also shares practical strategies for working with coding agents, including why plain-text AGENTS.md files outperform model weight fine-tuning for long-term knowledge retention. He also describes how he uses open-source tools like OpenWebUI, OpenCode and OpenChamber to integrate small and local LLM integration into development environments and web chats.  Discussion Resources & Links Adam's Projects & Research: BayLeaf AI Counterplatform: Hyper-local, open-source AI infrastructure built for UC Santa Cruz. See also the BayLeaf Getting Started Guide and BayLeaf Blog. Adam Smith's UCSC Directory Page & Personal Website Adam Smith on YouTube & GitHub (@rndmcnlly) Open-Source Agent Harnesses & Wrappers: OpenCode – Open-source command-line coding agent harness with VS Code integration (comparable to Claude Code) OpenChamber – Graphical desktop wrapper for OpenCode with VS Code support (comparable to Claude Cowork) OpenWeb UI – Self-hosted web interface and desktop app for local and remote LLM models OpenRouter – Token broker/middleman routing requests across competitive LLM inference providers r/LocalLlama – Community subreddit for local LLMs, open weights, and hardware advice AGENTS.md Convention & Agent Skills Standard – Open standards for persistent context management Context Distillation Paper (arXiv) Adam's Guide to Building Transagent Capabilities: Scope by Project Roots: Harnesses like OpenCode and OpenChamber use project root folders to establish clear, safe boundaries for agent execution. Store Context in Plain Text: Keep global and project preferences in simple .md files (like AGENTS.md or GLOSSARY.md). Plain text files make your accumulated knowledge portable across different model front-ends and harnesses. Handle Errors by Rewinding: When your LLM or agent makes a mistake, don't yell at it or try to correct it inline—go back in time to before the error and alter your prompt or context to lead it away from the mistake. Refactor Preferences into Skills: As your AGENTS.md context grows, ask the agent to factor recurring preferences out into modular skill files (.agentskills). Teach Transagency: Distinguish between standalone agent capabilities (autonomous work) and transagent capabilities (how the agent works with you). Build Local Tools: Ask the agent to build desktop helpers (QuickLook triggers, push notifications, or fuzzy glossary lookup) to keep a shared orientation. Elecia: "Complete one project or start a dozen?" Adam: "Tens of thousands, and start hundreds more within the starting of the other projects recursively forever." Transcript

Aaed Musa joins us to talk about building robot dogs, custom actuators, and his YouTube channel. He shares how he moved from 3D-printing servo robots in his parents' garage to designing capstan drives, and how he uses reinforcement learning to train quadrupedal walking gaits. We also talk about his senior design project (CARA 2.0), his Spider-Man web-shooter build, lessons in storytelling and video editing, and why he's starting a company to bring friendly, expressive quadrupeds into the home.  Aaed Musa is a mechanical engineering graduate from Purdue University, a hardware creator on YouTube, and co-founder of the robotics startup Mecha.  DISCUSSION RESOURCES & LINKS AAED'S CHANNELS & PROJECTS: Aaed Musa on YouTube: Project videos covering quadrupedal robot dogs, Spider-Man web shooters, and custom actuators. Oh, and planetary gears. More detailed project write ups are under projects on his personal site, including CARA 2.0. Github repository Robots Everywhere with Aaed Musa | The Amp Hour ROBOTICS & ACTUATOR TECH: Dyneema DM20: synthetic rope with zero creep used in zero-backlash capstan drives NVIDIA Isaac Sim: simulation and reinforcement learning environment for robotics OpenMV: Very smart MicroPython-powered machine vision modules. Kwabena Agyeman has spoken with us about OpenMV before: 497: Everyone Likes Tiny  477: One Thousand New Instructions 212: You Are in Seaworld SOME YOUTUBE CHANNELS MENTIONED: Good 3d printing youtube channels: 3DPrintingNerd  CNCKitchen  MadeWithLayers  Jeremy_Fielding: great for explaining how things work and coming at engineering from a non engineering direction (Embedded 385: I Just Wanted an Industrial Arm) James Bruton: Robot dogs!  Mark Rober has fantastic storytelling and approachable engineering. Stuff Made Here has robots and gadgets, generally a broad scope of engineering.

Author Susan Lammers joins the show to discuss the 40th anniversary edition of her classic book, Programmers at Work. We discuss what it was like to interview young and pioneering software developers like Toru Iwatani, C. Wayne Ratliff, and Michael Hawley and how the personal computer revolution was built by individuals seeking freedom from corporate mainframes.  Susan also shares her experiences as Editor-in-Chief at Microsoft Press, leading Microsoft's early interactive CD-ROM division, founding Headbone Interactive in the 1990s, and why she's bringing retro games like Elroy Goes Bugzerk back to Steam today.  SUSAN'S BOOK & WEB RESOURCES: Programmers at Work: 40th Anniversary Edition – Official site featuring updated bios, excerpts, and current career paths of the 19 interviewees Programmers at Work on Amazon or on Simon & Schuster website Overview and list of interviewees on Wikipedia HEADBONE INTERACTIVE & RETRO GAMING: HeadboneInteractive.com Headbone Interactive - Wikipedia  Elroy Goes Bugzerk on Steam – The classic 1990s interactive cartoon adventure game brought back for modern platforms SOFTWARE & HISTORICAL MENTIONS: VisiCalc on Wikipedia (The first computer spreadsheet) Ukatsuke Komachi (The automated receptionist robot at Namco in 1985) The Paris Review interview series (The literary inspiration behind Programmers at Work) Transcript

Kevin Santo Cappuccio, founder of Architeuthis Flux, joins the show to discuss creating Jumperless, an open-source breadboard that replaces physical jumper wires with software-controlled analog crossbar switches. We explore the need for 445 RGB LEDs on a breadboard, using MicroPython to create scriptable circuits, some of the lessons that can be implemented with the Jumperless, and how it might be used to create new instruments. Kevin also shares the story behind his upcoming Barnacle Board. DISCUSSION RESOURCES & LINKS Jumperless Project & Hardware Resources: Jumperless Docs and Discord Jumperless Shop (Also available via CrowdSupply but any discounts only apply to Kevin's shop) JumperlessV5 · GitHub: Open-source hardware files, schematics, and firmware Barnacle Board - GitHub:  The future of jumperless includes a modular breadboard with custom-stamped clips and removable protoboard tops Other Resources and Mentions: Wokwi Simulator: Online browser-based electronic circuit simulator  Falstad Circuit Simulator: Kevin's favorite browser-based analog simulator Hackaday Prize 2023: Jumperless took 2nd place in the 2023 contest.  Peter Griffin made an Microsoft Excel plugin interface for Jumperless, we discussed it with him in episode 505: Potato in a Number Field.  Kevin also talked with Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour with more information about the electrical response, timing, and the crossbars. Giant squid - Wikipedia 

Elecia and Christopher celebrate winning the IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Achievement Award in Outreach and Informal Education! A huge thank you to Mark Omo and the wonderful listeners who submitted nomination letters. Chris and Elecia talk about learning Hungarian to qualify Chris for an EU passport. They also cover Cory Doctorow's new book The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, smart ways to hand off codebases, and the most valuable skills they've relied on through their engineering careers. DISCUSSION RESOURCES & LINKS AWARDS & MILESTONES: IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Achievement Award in Outreach and Informal Education "For creating and sustaining Embedded.fm, a long-running technical engineering podcast that bridges academic theory and industry practice, champions underrepresented groups in STEM, addresses professional ethics, and provides informal technical mentorship to a global audience." Huge thanks to Mark Omo for submitting the nomination and to the other nominators for advocating for our work. To the 450+ guests—artists, makers, educators, entrepreneurs, and traditional engineers—who have generously shared their time and deep expertise with us: this award belongs to you too. And to our incredible global listener community: thank you for tuning in, sharing episodes with your colleagues, and keeping the STEM pipeline strong. If Embedded.fm has ever helped you solve a tricky bug, navigate a career transition, or stay inspired in hardware/software design, we'd love for you to celebrate with us by sharing your favorite episode with an early-career engineer or student this week! Embedded episode 501: Inside the Armpit of a Giraffe, an interview with biologist Meredith Palmer and engineer Akiba, won a Communicator Award for an Individual Episodes-Science & Technology, Distinction 2026. BOOKS & READING LIST: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Developers Who Shaped the Computer Industry by Susan Lammers (1986) Embedded AI: Intelligence at the Deep End by David Such (No Starch Press, Early Access) TECHNICAL & LANGUAGE MENTIONS: The Hungarian phrase "Boldog vagyok" ("I am happy"). Elecia's Duolingo page Zephyr RTOS and embedding Rust libraries into Zephyr environments Memfault observability, CSV data extractions, and battery performance analytics AI models escaping sandboxes (The OpenAI and Anthropic benchmark incidents) Transcript

Marine biologist Dr. Steven Haddock joins the show to share the alien, glowing, and transparent wonders of the deep ocean. We discuss his beautiful new book, The Radiant Sea, and explore the complex engineering and high-sensitivity optics required to capture living deep-sea creatures. Steve walks us through the evolutionary logic of biological light, how vantablack organisms trap photons in the dark, the horizontal sun-compass navigation of jellyfish blooms, and what it's like to play games underwater with giant Pacific octopuses and jumbo squids. Dr. Steven Haddock is a Senior Scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz. Some related MBARI Videos Bioluminescence in the deep sea: How and why do animals create their own light? Steven Haddock explains the diverse and striking functions of light emission in the ocean's twilight zone. (So many pretty pictures!)  Mysteries of the Deep with Dr. Steve Haddock — Bioluminescence! Long-form lecture on the physics and evolutionary biology of bioluminescence. Live Blackwater Diving Q&A with MBARI and Aquarium Scientists! | Into The Deep Q&A with scientists about diving in the middle of the ocean at night. Rarely Encountered Seven-Arm Octopus in Monterey Bay: Footage captured by Steve Haddock and MBARI's Biooptics team shows an octopus with a jelly snack. Discussion Resources & Links Steve's Books: The Radiant Sea: Color and Light in the Underwater World  by Steven Haddock and Sönke Johnsen Practical Computing for Biologists by Steven Haddock and Casey Dunn Scientific & Marine Mentions: Steven Haddock's Wikipedia Page Steven's MBARI home page. His lab is the Biodiversity and Biooptics Lab Electric Disco Clams Exist—Watch Them Light Up This Coral Reef | National Geographic  Why is she like this? Disco Snails (Official Video) - Music More neat creature videos Jelly-like Siphonophores Astound with Breathtaking Beauty: A close-up collection of the incredibly complex, colonial siphonophores that Steve mentioned, showing off their bizarre structures and flowing shapes in the pitch black. How the Disco Clam Uses Light to Fight Super-Strong Predators: See the "electric" flashing effects inside the disco clam's mantle up close, alongside an explanation of how their silica spheres scatter ambient light to startle predators. Absurd Creatures: Comb Jellies Are Ready to Rave – A fun, fast-paced video exploring the "Skittles" rainbow iridescence caused by the moving rows of cilia on ctenophores under white submersible lights. Transcript

Chris Svec returns to the show to discuss the messy, non-linear realities of engineering management and onboarding new college graduates. We explore why companies should bother hiring fresh grads in the first place, how to prevent junior developers from going dark when they get stuck, and why admitting ignorance publicly is an absolute workplace superpower. Along the way, we dive into managing genius firmware engineering hires, battling technical debt and software entropy, and why your development team shouldn't communicate solely through pull request comments. Chris Svec is the Director of Embedded Software Engineering at Insulet. If you're looking for an experienced leadership or management thought partner to help scale your development team, Chris Svec offers private coaching and consulting. You can reach him directly at the email given in the show (or hit the contact link and we'll forward your message along). RECOMMENDED BOOKS FOR ENGINEERING MANAGERS & TECH LEADS The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier – A guide for navigating tech leadership and managing engineering teams. Resilient Management by Lara Hogan – A book dedicated to the human side of engineering management. SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE & EMBEDDED SYSTEMS RESOURCES A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout – A high-level philosophical perspective on software engineering and architecture. The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas – A classic text on software development best practices. Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky – Insights on software development methodologies and managing tech teams. Making Embedded Systems by Elecia White – A comprehensive guide to firmware design patterns and embedded architecture. Embedded for Everyone by Nathan Jones – A curated repository of accessible embedded system learning resources. EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING GAMES Shenzhen I.O. by Zachtronics – An interactive puzzle game for learning assembly programming. Typer Shark! Deluxe – A classic game to improve typing speed and precision for developers. MENTIONS AND EPISODE CONTEXT Embedded.fm blog post: Resilience is a Skill and Embedded Skills Tree  The "Meow Meow Beans" episode from the TV show Community (season 5, episode 8), see a snippet. All Systems Red by Martha Wells – The sci-fi novel featured in today's closing quote If you want to dive into Svec's previous appearances on the podcast, be sure to check out: 78: Happy Cows (His very first appearance, discussing empathy in software development) 250: Yolo Snarf (All about version control, gitflow, and D&D) 297: Mice to Do My Bidding (Focusing on attentional focus and workflow psychological tricks) 402: We Are a Lazy Species (Software schedule estimation alongside Philip Johnston) 436: 20 GOTO 10 (Discussing modern kids' programming languages and the longevity of the Joel Test) Transcript 

Tyler Hoffman returns to the show to discuss diagnostics and observability data in embedded systems. We catch up on his life after startup acquisition, explore the hows and whys of keeping product data separate from operational data, and consider the realities of fleet management at scale.  Tyler is the co-founder of Memfault. Memfault was acquired by Nordic Semiconductor about a year ago. While Nordic has nRF Cloud as a smaller scale solution for Nordic devices (~100 devices), Memfault will continue to maintain support for non-Nordic platforms as well. During the discussion, Tyler advocates for a "device-in-control" philosophy, emphasizing that edge devices should retain the intelligence to manage their own firmware updates and telemetry. We also discuss the practical constraints of remote fleet debugging, outlining why tools built for high-bandwidth web infrastructure will quickly bankrupt an IoT company, and identifying exactly when a project is too low-bandwidth, or too small, to justify an external observability platform. Christopher shares his recent experiences with Memfault which leads to a discussion of chunks, flash memory buffers and MDS. The Memfault Diagnostic Service (MDS) is a standardized way for BLE devices to send the chunk payloads to a gateway device (mobile phone) which can then forward the data to the Memfault cloud. If you want a deep dive into the reasoning around starting Memfault, Tyler was on Embedded.fm episodes 390: Irresponsible At the Time and 395: I Can No Longer Play Ping Pong. Reaching back into the archives, Elecia, Tyler, and Phillip Johnston were on the Memfault Coredump Sessions podcast, a special crosspost with Embedded.fm, episode 451: From Concept to Launch  You can also find technical deep dives on Memfault's Interrupt blog. "What we do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."  – Dr. Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. Transcript