Hardware Podcasts

531: Sequestering the Mess

Embedded.fm · 6 Aug 2026 · 1h 07m · Episode 531

What this episode covers

Elecia White and Christopher White discuss winning the IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Achievement Award for their podcast, Embedded.fm, and celebrate the milestone with informal education outreach. Christopher details his work integrating Rust libraries into Zephyr RTOS and struggling with Memfault's data extraction capabilities, while Elecia manages a complex robotics project. They also review books like Cory Doctorow's 'The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI' and 'Programmers at Work,' debating the ethics of taking advice from controversial figures and the societal impact of AI.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
IEEE, OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, No Starch Press
Tools
Zephyr RTOS, Memfault
Also
Embedded.fm, Rust, Cory Doctorow, David Such, Programmers at Work, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI

Related episodes from other shows

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 04m

    Hipster Fodder

    Hosts Chris Gammell and Dave Jones discuss a range of hardware engineering and business topics. Gammell shares his experience hiring tutors on Upwork to learn FreeRTOS and nRF52 firmware, while Jones details his decision to downsize his office space and his interest in writing a textbook after discovering a lost 1980s circuit design book. The conversation also covers the SBIR grant program for small businesses, the design of Arrival's electric delivery vans, and solder paste application techniques.

    Embedded firmwarePricing, margins & unit economics
    6 chapters

  • The Pragmatic Embedded Podcast · 49m

    Buzzword Bingo (or: which modern technologies make sense for embedded?)

    Hosts Jeff Gable and Luca Ingianni evaluate modern development buzzwords for embedded systems, discussing the applicability of web technologies like Kubernetes and Docker, the nuances of CI/CD pipelines, and the practical adoption of Rust and modern C++. They highlight specific tools such as Memfault, Mender, and Renode for observability and simulation, and analyze the role of AI in both device-side machine learning and developer productivity.

    Embedded firmwareMicrocontrollers & dev platforms
    8 chapters

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 12m

    Building Firmware and Hardware for Trade Shows with Mike Szczys

    Mike Szczys, formerly of Hackaday and now at Golioth, discusses building firmware and hardware for trade shows like Embedded World with his coworker Chris Gammell. They detail the challenges of integrating E-Ink displays using Zephyr RTOS and MicroPython on an RP2040-based faceplate, highlighting the steep learning curve of Zephyr's device tree and manifest system. The conversation covers the benefits of Zephyr's centralized ecosystem compared to FreeRTOS, the use of built-in debugging shells, and the technical hurdles of I2C peripheral programming on the Raspberry Pi Pico.

    Embedded firmwareMicrocontrollers & dev platforms
    7 chapters

  • Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast · 52m

    060 - The Brie List

    Hosts Alvaro and Jen celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast with a retrospective on their personal and professional lives. Jen discusses her transition to voiceover work, her new role in research, and her ethical concerns regarding robotics, while Alvaro highlights the podcast's most popular episodes and the success of the Asahi Linux project. They also promote the book Open Circuits by Wendell and Eric, sharing a discount code for listeners.

    Creator businessRobotics & autonomy
    5 chapters

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 07m

    The Magic of Calipers

    Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss Dave's recent struggles uploading code to GitHub and GitLab, leading to a broader conversation about version control tools like Tortoise SVN and the Zephyr RTOS. They explore the technical merits of E-ink displays for low-power IoT devices and the mechanics of digital calipers, before analyzing the new chip startup Atomic Semi founded by Sam Zeloof and Jim Keller. The episode concludes with a demonstration of AI's capabilities in generating code for hardware projects and a review of new features in KiCad 7.

    Embedded firmwareAI & machine learning
    9 chapters

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Embedded.fm. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.