The Amp Hour · 14 Feb 2020 · 1h 18m · Episode 479
Chris Gammell, founder of Contextual Electronics, explains his transition from hardware consulting to learning embedded firmware to stabilize his income. He details his personal project involving an STM32F030 and a 433MHz transmitter, highlighting the steep learning curve of moving from Arduino to bare-metal C development. Gammell and guests Elecia White and Dave Jones discuss the importance of hiring tutors, using build logs for debugging, and the specific frustrations of dealing with obscure Chinese components and complex microcontroller peripherals like SPI displays and I2S audio.
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Chris Gammell, founder of Contextual Electronics and host of The Amp Hour, discusses his journey learning embedded firmware as a hardware consultant. He details his personal project using an STM32F030 and an EFM8 microcontroller, the challenges of debugging with GDB and Vim, and the value of hiring tutors and using books like 'Making Embedded Systems' to build confidence and technical depth.
Elecia White and Christopher White discuss embedded software engineering challenges, including using semihosting for debugging STM32 microcontrollers when UARTs are unavailable, and strategies for navigating new codebases. They address the pitfalls of choosing microcontrollers without firmware input, highlighting risks like NDAs and lack of community support, and speculate on the documentation quality of the new RP2350. The conversation also covers career advice, such as building skills through a 'skills tree' and the value of master's degrees in embedded systems.
George Stocker, former VP of Software Development at Jewelbots, discusses his transition from a 10-year career in application development to embedded firmware engineering. He details the challenges of building the Jewelbot, a Bluetooth-enabled friendship bracelet for girls, including porting the Nordic nRF51 SDK, debugging hardware-software interactions, and managing the unique constraints of a hardware startup. Stocker highlights the humbling experience of learning embedded systems from scratch, the insular nature of the embedded community, and the specific technical hurdles of BLE mesh networking and power management.
Elecia White and Christopher White discuss Elecia's recent burnout while teaching her Making Embedded Systems course on Classpert, and Christopher's debugging of a subtle SPI + FreeRTOS bug on a Cypress PSoC chip. They also cover Elecia's recommendations for the book 'Thanks for the Feedback', the Wokwi simulator for Raspberry Pi Pico, and listener projects like Serial Wombat and Cyanobyte.
Hosts Alicia White and Christopher White discuss listener questions regarding USB implementation challenges, IoT security thesis advice, and prototyping strategies. They analyze the differences between ARM microcontroller vendors, code reuse in embedded systems, and the utility of tools like audiomovers.com for remote audio collaboration. The episode also touches on personal coping mechanisms for stress and motivation during the pandemic.
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