The Contextual Electronics Podcast

This is a crossover episode with The Amp Hour podcast (also made by Chris)

Welcome, Zack Freedman of Voidstar Lab

Zack Freedman is a prototyping engineer turned YouTuber who makes bombastic videos about 3D printed creations and getting projects across the finish line. He joins Chris to talk about his past hardware designs and what he will be building next.

Show Notes

0:00 Introduction

2:05 What Zack is building (a computer)

2:40 A water cooled oscilloscope

3:40 How Zack got started

4:40 Hackaday article

5:20 Bluetooth heads up display

5:40 Hoboken Hackerspace

7:15 NYC electronics scene

8:30 Working with artists

10:00 Working on the set of Mr Robot

11:05 Doing a first run prototype for a startup

13:10 Building skills in high pressure environments and on consulting jobs

17:45 Working on deadlines

19:10 How many projects are in a single video?

20:45 Building subassemblies

21:30 Building projects “backwards” (outside in)

23:00 Not thinking your idea is the last good idea you’ll ever have

24:15 The prototyping mindset

27:00 Ranking risk in a project

29:15 Usability in wearable projects

31:30 “The role of most prototypes is to try to kill the idea”

33:30 What makes people want to buy a prototype?

35:45 Minimizing features in any one prototype / test

36:30 Consumer products should be shown to thousands before going to market

38:00 YouTubers’ battle for attention (check out Voidstar Lab to see all of Zack’s videos)

41:00 YouTube theories

44:45 Zack’s persona

47:00 Filming b-roll to keep things interesting

51:00 YouTube comment positivity

52:25 Maker Twitter

54:00 Full time YouTube

54:20 Changes in the hardware space since 2012

56:40 Prototyping tools

58:30 “The Maker Movement”

59:25 Working for industrial clients

1:01:40 Focusing on the technology vs the purpose of the technology

1:03:30 Building a project because you want the thing (output)

1:05:30 Technology being used to move the world forward

1:07:15 What will Zack build in the future?

1:09:40 The Cyberdeck

1:12:15 Cyberdeck cafe Discord

1:13:10 Building on a stream vs on a video (streams happen on Zack’s Patreon every Monday and Friday)

1:14:40 Previously wanting to go into game design

1:16:30 Providing a representation of what people think the process is

1:17:20 People think IronMan is reality

1:18:20 Bringing people into the field

1:20:25 “Finish more projects”

1:23:30 Going beyond the getting started projects

1:26:20 People genuinely interested in a topic will skip beginner classes

1:27:35 Engineering is intrinsically solitary

1:29:30 Trying to figure out gender discrepancies in making

1:31:05 “What’s it like to put yourself out there?”

1:32:30 Putting yourself out there will help you find more positive feedback

1:35:05 Building community

1:37:00 Finding Zack’s work and joining his community

Patreon

YouTube

Discord

Twitter

Instagram

1:38:40 Conclusion

 

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Audio version

Welcome, Jon Evans of the KiCad project!

Jon Evans is a longtime developer on the KiCad project and practicing EE at Formlabs. He joins Chris to talk about the future of KiCad, including features that are coming in V6.

Show Notes

0:00 Introduction

2:15 Making changes to the platform

4:00 History of the codebase – Chat with the KiCad team about V6 and beyond

5:05 Jon’s work background – Jon works for Formlabs

8:20 What is coming in KiCad v6?

10:45 Working with legacy code in KiCad

13:30 Looking at an example project

14:50 Schematic editor

18:50 Changes to the schematic UI

21:00 Layout tool

22:45 Changes to the layout UI

24:10 The split of beginner vs advanced users

25:55 The benefits of an open source tool

26:25 Comparison to tools that are cloud based

27:45 The KiCad ecosystem

30:45 KiCad Professional Services

32:00 KiCon 2021

33:10 What is DRC? How is it changing?

37:40 The challenges of live DRC

40:15 Example of DRC

46:05 New python API

48:30 Example project for using python scripting with KiCad

50:00 How the KiCad project works with feature requests

52:15 Working with the console inside KiCad

53:55 What else is Jon excited about in V6?

56:20 KiCad as a professional tool?

1:00:05 Following Jon online

1:02:10 Conclusion

Other links:

Follow Jon on Twitter

KiCad User Forum

KiCad Discord

KiCad Twitter

Thank you for supporting The Contextual Electronics Podcast! Here’s how you can follow and help us grow:

Please follow us on social media:

@ContextualElec on Twitter

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Video version of the podcast:

Audio version

 

Welcome, Kat Scott of Open Robotics!

Kat is a developer advocate at Open Robotics, the company behind software like the open source Robot Operating System (ROS). Kat joins Chris to talk about how to create high complexity robotic creations and also how to create the lower level electronics that integrate into larger ROS systems. Kat is a member of OSHWA, which defines and certifies Open Source Hardware.

Show Notes

DOT CARMA

NASA VIPER

DARPA Tutorials

Autoware Lecture Series

F1 Tenth

Indy Autonomous Challenge

Virtual Robot X – Maritime Robotics

Njord Robotics

Tahoe Robot

ROS Industrial

ROS for Arms

ROS Nav Stack

Ignition Gazebo Simulation

GazeboSim.org

GazeboSim community

MicroROS

Autoware.ai

The Ministry of Silly Walks

OSHWA

The 2021 Open Source Hardware Summit (now passed, due to delay in releasing this episode)

TurtleBot

The Open Robotics twitter account

Kat Scott’s Twitter account

 

Thank you for supporting The Contextual Electronics Podcast! Here’s how you can follow and help us grow:

Please follow us on social media:

@ContextualElec on Twitter

Contextual Electronics on Facebook

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Video version of the podcast:

Audio version

Welcome, Becky Stern!

Becky is an artist and content producer who works electronics into projects using a wide variety of media and construction techniques. Becky also teaches a class on electronics at SVA in NYC. She is a product manager at Instructables.

Show Notes

Her most recent project: Zodiac Embroidery

Slack status updater

Collaboration with Esetfanie and Naomi

13 ideas for LED diffusion

Raspberry Pi peephole camera

Becky’s recording setup

Instagram

Knitting

How a sewing machine (bobbin) works

Tools page

Becky’s favoite knife

All of the electronics posts on BeckyStern.com

Becky Stern YouTube

Time tags:

0:00 Introduction

1:47 Becky Stern bio

3:34 Building out ideas

4:57 Learning new things

6:36 Collaborations

8:46 LEDs and light in projects

13:20 #SampleCode

14:30 What is a neopixel (WS2812)

16:15 Teaching students

19:55 Getting started programming

21:20 Higher level programming projects

24:20 Troubleshooting remotely

27:00 Best practices for documentation

29:20 Camera tips

33:10 Creating documentation from photos

36:30 Getting started crafting

40:05 “Getting to blinky” for crafts

42:15 Finishing projects

45:40 Setting a schedule for projects

48:30 Making things easy for your future self

49:30 Tools

53:25 Small workspaces

54:00 Future projects

58:40 Where to find Becky’s work

59:20 Wrap up

Thank you for supporting The Contextual Electronics Podcast! Here’s how you can follow and help us grow:

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@ContextualElec on Twitter

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Video version of the podcast:

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Welcome, Conservify!

Our guests today

Shah Selbe

Jacob Lewallen

Bradley Gawthrop

Show Notes

Conservify is creating the FieldKit, a new modular system for environmental monitoring for research scientists and citizen scientists.

FieldKit goes arboreal

Testing for wild hardware

Open source! Check out the hardware and firmware on Github

The hardware

FieldKit weather

Fieldkit enclosure

Upper / Lower / Modules

Solar and batteries

Winning The Hackaday Prize

Time tags:

0:00 Introduction

1:11 Conservify team introduction

6:20 Deploying electronics into harsh environments

10:35 Using off the shelf components

12:29 Monitoring water levels in the Amazon river basin

14:20 How did scientists measure things in the past?

20:23 Correlating data in the past

22:49 Open source in field science

23:22 FieldKit Hardware

28:11 Accomodating different hardware needs

31:30 Hardware details

34:20 Power requirements for the field

36:48 Unexpected customer requests

38:40 Community contributed hardware / firmware

44:50 Data visualization

48:10 FieldKit.org demo

52:35 Publishing without hardware

55:28 Who is using FieldKit?

57:25 Pilot program with NYC

58:30 Upcoming air quality kit

1:03:10 Giveaway of FieldKit stations

1:05:22 Focus on affordability

1:06:14 Deploying more non-profit FieldKits

1:07:32 Where to find more info

1:08:35 Hackaday Prize

1:09:32 Summary and wrap-up

Thank you for supporting The Contextual Electronics Podcast! Here’s how you can follow and help us grow:

Please follow us on social media:

@ContextualElec on Twitter

Contextual Electronics on Facebook

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@Chris_Gammell on Twitter

Please consider leaving us a review

iTunes page for subscribing and reviewing

Video version of the podcast:

Audio version