Contextual Electronics highlights stories of people using electronics to solve their problems. Listeners will hear how to use electronics in their own projects, by learning about new technologies and techniques. Tune in each week to hear a different guest and how they are using electronics to solve a problem in their life. Contextual Electronics is also an online education program. Started in 2014, CE pairs theory and practice for learning electronics. In 2020, we started the podcast to highlight stories of using electronics in real world contexts.
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.
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 Contextual Electronics on Facebook Contextual Electronics on LinkedIn @Chris_Gammell on Twitter Please consider leaving us a review iTunes page for subscribing and reviewing Video version of the podcast: Audio version
Kat Scott of Open Robotics 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 also a member of OSHWA, which defines and certifies Open Source Hardware.
Becky Stern mixes electronics, crafts, and practical applications to create interesting products and projects. She talks with Chris about her library of work and how to get started pairing electronics with something other than plastic boxes.
Conservify is creating the FieldKit, a new modular system for environmental monitoring for research scientists and citizen scientists. The engineering team joins Chris to talk about deploying measurement systems into harsh environments and how to make things that last.
Timon (@timonsku) joins Chris to talk about his experience creating low volume products at low cost (two things not normally associated). His experience building technical exhibitions, and more recently CM4 boards, gives him the experience to offer Chris some suggestions on reducing the cost of the ABC board.
In this episode, Mike Cheich (Programming Electronics) and Phil FitzGerald (The Compelling Message) talk with Chris about how to learn and teach electronics. This discussion also covers how to construct your own electronics learning journey, so you can get to your destination faster and learn how to create the custom electronics you'd like to build.
Joe Barnard joins Chris to talk about building scale model rockets and using thrust vector control to try and land those rockets like SpaceX does. This is an ongoing rocketry and video experiment you can follow and watch on BPS.Space!
Sarah Petkus is an artist and a maker who combines illustration, electronics, 3D printing, and softgoods design to bring her visions to life.
Roy Chen, Field Application Engineer (FAE) for Quectel, joins Chris to talk about the cellular module design on the ABC board (part of Contextual Electronics). This acts as an insight into the relationship between engineers and FAEs.
Mike Fikes normally works on software, focusing on Clojure Script and other high level language implementations. Mike joins Chris to talk about bringing similar methodologies to the world of hardware, and how he learned how to work on hardware.
Elen from Fully Automated Technologies joins Chris to talk about building high current battery controllers. She also describes an exciting new site called EDeA, for offering circuit schematic and layout blocks in KiCad. That site will allow users to pull in open source, proven design blocks to their designs. All electronics designed at Fully Automated Technologies is open source.
Today we're talking with, Erik Larson, who is a firmware engineer with some interesting background! He joins Chris to review the Advanced BLE-Cell (ABC) board, which is also a new course on Contextual Electronics. Erik has worked at places like Honeywell Aerospace, Apriva and Hologram (where he and Chris met). Erik is now a full time consultant for his own company, Statropy Software LLC. Erik was the firmware engineer on the Hologram Dash, which was an embedded module that Hologram used to make for people to get started making cellular connected devices. During his career, he had to learn how to code remotely on a VAX! This meant being very careful with code check-ins Erik and Chris review some of the "Must check" sections of schematics, in order to get firmware and hardware talking properly: Pin selection on a microcontroller Programming elements, including the bootloader Understanding the peripherals of the specific chip you're using The board we're reviewing is the Advanced BLE-CELL (ABC) board, which is designed as part of a Contextual Electronics course. You can follow along and watch the entire design of this board if you're a member of Contextual Electronics. Here is the schematic, as shown in the video (has since been updated for the course, as has the layout) Check out the nRF52840 Product Specification (datasheet) Erik recommends getting a development board and breakout boards before the hardware arrives. You can hire Erik to help with your next firmware project on his website, Statropy Software, LLC That's our third episode, which is the last in our initial release of shows! Please follow us on social media: @Chris_Gammell on Twitter @ContextualElec on Twitter Contextual Electronics on Facebook Contextual Electronics on LinkedIn Please consider leaving us a review iTunes page for subscribing and reviewing Video version of the podcast: Audio version of the podcast:
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