Janelle Shane (@JanelleCShane) shared truly weird responses from AIs. Her website is AIWeirdness.com where you can find machine-learning-generated ideas for paint colors, ice cream, and cocktails (and many other things). We never said they were good ideas.

Janelle’s FAQ will help you get started trying out RNNs yourself. We recommend the Embedded show titles.

We talked about BigGAN which generates pictures based on input images.

Wikipedia list of animals by number of neurons

Janelle’s book is You Look Like a Thing and I Love You. Sign up for her newsletter to get the PG-13 versions of her hilarious AI outputs.

Alan Cohen joined us to talk about brain waves, medical product development, open source, and helpful engineering.

Alan has been working on VolksEEG (volkseeg.org, github.com/VolksEEG/VolksEEG). This is an EEG (wiki Electroencephalography) which detects brain waves. It uses the TI ADS1299 EEG monitoring chip and the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense.

Alan wrote Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market, published by O’Reilly. He talked about it on a previous episode: 269: Ultra-Precise Death Ray You can find him on twitter as @proto2product  and on LinkedIn. 

Helpful Engineering (helpfulengineering.org) aims to deliver more open source solutions to society’s systemic challenges.

Chris and Elecia discuss civic duties, the CAN bus, fulfilling Kickstarter orders, and the answers to a series of questions about embedded systems.

Elecia was recently introduced to TRIZ inventive principles (wikipedia page) and started reading And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ: Theory of Inventive Problem Solving by Genrich Altshuller.

You can support the show by becoming a patron on Patreon: patreon.com/embedded 

Or your company can sponsor a show, see the Sponsor page of embedded.fm

We spoke to author Robin Sloan about his books and near-future science fiction.

Robin wrote Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore and Sourdough.

Find Robin on twitter as @robin_____sloan. Robin’s website is robinsloan.com. Go there for some short stories, sign up for his newsletter and check out his new ‘zine (also at wizard.limo). Oh! Don’t forget his blog, including a description of his neural net for audio generation and for writing.

Some books Robin suggested:

• Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynshi

• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

• Hild by Nicola Griffith

Sunshine Jones spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy.

Find him on twitter @Sunshine_Jones and instagram at sunshine_jones_

Sunshine’s music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com. His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com.

We talked about Sunshine’s User’s Guide to the Roland SE-02. That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02.

Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth.

The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The exit music is Fall In Love Not In Line, released this year on vinyl only, TUOC01. See TheUrgencyOfChange.com for more.

Sunshine was the host of SundaySoul.com, a live podcast about music and life.

Ingo Muschenetz spoke with us about software, management, podcasts, and interacting with people. 

Ingo’s LinkedIn page

Ingo works for Axway, they are hiring: Axway Careers

Ingo keeps up with many podcasts, here are some of his favorites:

Podcasts that talk about a complex topic, provide insight

• Throughline

• Planet Money

• Indicator  https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money

• Freakonomics

Podcasts with interviews and discussions about lives and careers

• Conan OBrian https://www.earwolf.com/show/conan-obrien

• Andy Richter  https://www.earwolf.com/show/the-three-questions-with-andy-richter/

• Fresh Air

Podcasts that don’t fit into a category other than “interesting”:

• 99% invisible

• 20000 Hz

• RadioLab https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab

Podcasts that Ingo didn’t mention but meant to:

• The Daily: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily

• Software Engineering Daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/

• The Bugle: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/

• Switched on Pop: https://switchedonpop.com/

• Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/

Jeremy Fielding spoke with us about mechanical engineering, robotics, robot operating system, YouTube, and solving problems. You can find all of Jeremy’s links on his main site: jeremyfielding.com but here are a few short cuts:

• YouTube channel: Jeremy Fielding

• Twitter: @jeremy_fielding

• Instagram: @jeremy_fielding

• Patreon: jeremyfieldingsr

Jeremy’s Industrial arm punching video

Elecia’s typing robot

Jeremey had a neat way to go about solving a problem. He called it Dr. FARM:

• D Define the problem

• R Research other solutions, partial solutions, terminology

• F Function: what do I want it it do?

• A Appearance: what should it look like?

• R Risk: is anyone going to get hurt in manufacture and function?

• M Model: prototype the design

AR3 Open Source Control Software and a version with ROS MoveIt

Liam Cadigan joined us to talk about founding a successful startup from a college capstone project. Liam is a co-founder of InspectAR and worked on the board files the system uses.

Liam can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Check out InspectAR. They are also on Twitter and on Instagram.

The Inventor's Dilemma: The Remarkable Life of H. Joseph Gerber

Alex Glow filled our heads with project ideas.

Alex is the Resident Hardware Nerd at Hackster.io. Her page is glowascii and you might want to see Archimedes the AI robot owl and the Hardware 101 channel. They have many sponsored contests including BadgeLove. You can find her on Twitter at @glowascii.

Lightning round led us to many possibles:

• It you were building an IoT stuffed animal, what would you use? Mycroft and Snips are what is inside Archimedes.

• If you were building a camera to monitor a 3d printer, what would you use? For her M3D Micro Printer, Alex would use the Raspberry Pi based OctoPi to monitor it.

• If you were going to a classroom of 2nd graders, what boards would you take? The BBC Micro:bit (based on Code Bug) or some LittleBits kits (Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit and Korg Synth Kit are on Amazon (those are Embedded affiliate links, btw).

• If you were going to make a car-sized fighting robot, what dev system would you use? The Open Source Novena DIY Laptop initially designed Bunnie Huang

There were more software and hardware kits to explore:

• Google DIY AI

• Arduino Maker1000

• Raspberry Pi Chirp.io   

For your amusement Floppotron plays Bohemian Rhapsody

Alex gave a shout out to her first hackerspace All Hands Active

Ableton is audio workstation and sequencer software. Alex recommends Women’s Audio Mission as a good way to learn audio production and recording if you are in the San Francisco area.

There is an Interplanetary File System and Alex worked on a portable printer console for it.

Elecia is always willing to talk about Ty the typing robot and/or narwhals teaching Bayes Rule. She recommended the book There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings by Kenn Amdahl.

Mario Marchese (aka Mario the Maker Magician) spoke with us about robots performing magic, humans performing magic, and writing a book about making magic. We also covered art, making, learning, Sesame Street, performance, design, humor, Piff the Magic Dragon [sic], magic secrets, and gracefully handling technological failure.

You can find Mario on:

• His website mariothemagician.com

• YouTube (MariotheMagicianNYC)

• Instagram (mariothemagician)

• Twitter (@mariomagician)

• Facebook (mariothemagician). 

His book is The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making.

We talked about Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, 19th century French watchmaker, magician and illusionist, and the amazing Aldo Colombini.