It’s another episode with Elecia and Chris. This week they discuss people that have influenced their lives and careers, thinking about past career choices and regrets therein, identities, the Embedded Slack book club, and electronic projects.

Chris is currently taking Dogbotic’s DIY Rhythm Widgets course which covers making an analog drum machine from components. We had Dogbotic founder Kirk Pearson on the show on Episode 491.

Elecia mentioned the book that the Embedded Slack #book-club channel is working through, Data Driven Science & Engineering Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Control, which you can find for free at https://databookuw.com along with code and examples. The group is two sessions in but if you want to join late, join the Slack group via Patreon or Ko-Fi.

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Emily Lovell spoke with us about teaching how to contribute to open source, including her own experience creating the LilyTiny as a Master’s student and researching the impact as a PhD student.

The LilyTiny work was done in conjunction with Leah Buechley (Embedded episode 382). See the paper The LilyTiny: A Case Study in Expanding Access to Electronic Textiles or watch the video.

UCSC Open Source Program Office (note this is different from the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) that we spoke about with Carl Maltzahn (Episode 285).

Emily recommended the curriculum from TeachingOpenSource.org.

Emily’s other life is at EP Custom Pickups and Aberdeen Guitars. She spoke on a lutherie panel at NAMM.

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Mouser’s Empowering Innovation Together hub dives into all sorts of topics like renewable energy, energy-efficient systems, and sustainable design. Whether you’re looking for the latest in clean tech trends or just need some inspiration, you’ll find articles, videos, and podcasts all geared toward engineers who want to make a difference. Head over to Mouser.com/empowering-innovation and check out their clean tech content.

Chris and Elecia talk about Murderbot, LLMs (AI), bikes, control algorithms, and fancy math.

The website with the ecology jobs is wildlabs.net from 501: inside the Armpit of Giraffe with Meredith Palmer and Akiba..

The algorithm Elecia mentioned was from Patent US7370713B1. The Control Bootcamp YouTube series is a great introduction to control systems beyond PIDs There is also a book from the same folks (with matlab and some python code): Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Control.

Finding bad AI interactions is too easy. Copilot PR mess that was discussed. Lawyers letting ChatGPT hallucinate precedents. Fake (hallucinated) citations in a high-profile report on children’s health.

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Nordic Semiconductor has been the driving force for Bluetooth Low Energy MCUs and wireless SoCs since the early 2010s, and they offer solutions for low-power Wi-Fi and global Cellular IoT as well. If you plan on developing robust and battery-operated applications, check out their hardware, software, tools, and services.

On academy.nordicsemi.com, you’ll find Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular IoT courses, and the Nordic DevZone community covers technical questions: devzone.nordicsemi.com.

Congratulations to the giveaway winners!