Changing Course with Shawn Hymel

The Amp Hour · 9 Aug 2024 · Episode 675

What this episode covers

Shawn Hymel, formerly of Edge Impulse, discusses his transition from developer relations to creating full-time educational courses in embedded systems and CAD. He explains why he is leaving corporate engineering to focus on progressive learning content, citing the difficulty of competing with low-cost hardware manufacturers and the limitations of one-off video projects. The conversation covers his upcoming courses on FreeCAD, 3D printing, and the Zephyr RTOS, as well as his advice for hardware engineers looking to upskill in machine learning and edge AI.

Mentioned

Companies
Edge Impulse, DigiKey, SparkFun, Adafruit, Seeed Studio, NVIDIA, Hugging Face, ARM, Contextual Electronics, Golioth
Products
Arduino
Tools
FreeCAD, KiCad, Zephyr, Fusion 360, Onshape, ESP-IDF, FreeRTOS
Also
Coursera, Andrew Ng

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 13m

    403: Engineers Are a Difficult People

    Shawn Hymel, Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Edge Impulse and former content creator for Digi-Key, discusses the challenges of marketing to engineers and the evolution of embedded machine learning. He shares insights on building an audience from zero, the importance of educational content over traditional advertising, and his transition from SparkFun to Edge Impulse. Hymel also details his technical background in Hidden Markov Models and his current work teaching TinyML via Coursera.

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 44m

    228: Pedantic or Andrantic

    Chris Gamble, a developer advocate at Hologram, discusses the complexities of cellular IoT connectivity, explaining how his company simplifies the hardware, connectivity, and software stack for developers. Elecia White, author of 'Making Embedded Systems', and Chris White, firmware engineer at Fitbit, share their professional backgrounds and recent holiday gifts, including Moog and Teenage Engineering synthesizers, a J-Trace Pro debugger, and a HackRF software-defined radio. The hosts engage in a deep discussion on pedagogy, specifically the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, and strategies for learning complex topics like computer vision and embedded software by using practical projects as hooks.

  • OnTrack · 47m

    AI Vision Systems in Manufacturing with Deepview's Eliyahu Davis

    Eliyahu Davis, lead engineer at Deepview AI, explains how his company uses deep learning to automate factory inspection, reducing setup time from 40 hours to minutes. Davis details his transition from aerospace software engineering to hardware, describing how he learned Altium Designer through online resources and mentorship to design the camera's PCB. He discusses the technical challenges of running neural network training on edge devices and the future of foundation models in industrial automation.

  • OnTrack · 51m

    The Future of PCB Design Education: HaSofu Founder Kirsch Mackey

    Kirsch Mackey, founder of HaSofu, explains how his educational platform bridges the gap between academic theory and industry requirements for PCB and hardware design. He discusses the realistic limitations of AI in engineering workflows, warning that while AI can accelerate tasks, it cannot replace the deterministic reasoning required for physical design. Mackey details HaSofu's curriculum, which covers topics from basic electronics to embedded firmware using platforms like STM32 and 8051, and outlines future plans for power electronics and AI engineering courses.

  • Embedded.fm · 56m

    351: Dextral or Sinistral

    Hosts Elecia White and Christopher White discuss the value of show transcripts, compare NumPy and MATLAB for computational work, and detail Christopher's 3D printed Star Wars lightsaber and Elecia's Python-based origami seashell modeling. They also address listener questions regarding career transitions into embedded systems, emphasizing the importance of internships, open-source contributions, and building tangible projects like using Rust or Linux tools. The episode concludes with commentary on the hardware ecosystem, including ARM Macs and GPU shortages.

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