Rob Faludi (@Faludi), author of Building Wireless Sensor Networks and chief innovator at Digi International, spoke with us about Zigbee, writing, and experimenting.

Rob's blog

Books we talked about:

• Building Wireless Sensor Networks (of course!)
• Creativity, Inc.
• Make: Wearable Electronics

Mike Szczys (@Szczys) discusses @Hackaday, the SPACE! prize, being a professional musician, and visiting Silicon Valley.

Hackaday.com blog including Mike's post about Why Open Design is the way forward

Hackaday.io project site

Hackaday Prize

• All entries
• 50 semifinalists
• Science fiction contest winners (previous contest)
• Mike was on the judging panel to winnow down from 800 entries to 50. Some projects that he thought were particularly awesome that didn't make the semifinalist cut.
  • Intelligent Ski Course
  • Taylor Multifuel Null-rotor Turbine
  • V-Sink -- video in anything out (not discussed)
  • Daisy Kite Airborne Wind Turbine (not discussed)

Supply Frame FindChips and (upcoming) Parts.io

In response to a listener question, Elecia wrote a blog post about things to do in Silicon Valley. When Mike visited for the first time, he caught many highlights: he went toHSC/Halted, enjoying how organized it is, woke up early for the De Anza electronics flea market, and had a ball at the Computer History Museum.

Mike's Science Friday segment

Angie Chang (@thisgirlangie) joined us to talk about the coding bootcamp Hackbright Academy, their upcoming hardware hackathon, Girl Geek Dinners, and the extreme awkwardness of networking.

Sign up to be a hackathon mentor (not gender limited) or to be on the waitlist to attend (women only). Get your team together on Hackathon IO.

Sign up to be a Hackbright Academy mentor.

Oh look! Elecia signed up to speak on Sunday!

Grace Hopper Conference

The article on Peter Thiel and women founders by Kate Losse that Chris referenced toward the end of the show.

In front of a live audience, Chris and Elecia talk about their experiences with FAA and FDA.

This show was recorded live in front of the Silicon Valley Automotive Open Source meetup group at Hacker Dojo.

The Wikipedia article on DO-178B is a good place to get an overview of the FAA process (even for other levels of concern).

For FDA, their guidance is the best place to start. Also see their 510k information. Finally, note that all class III (3, very high risk) require the more difficult Premarket Approval (PMA) process.

Everything we know about car safety certification, we learned by reading Wikipedia's ISO-26262, including Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL).

Jack Ganssle's Embedded.fm episode was Being a Grownup Engineer.

Jack Gassett (@gadgetfactory) is the creator of the open source FPGA Papiliodevelopment board. He joins Chris and Elecia to answer the age-old question of how to get started with FPGAs.

Jack's company is Gadget Factory.

Chris got the Papilio Pro and Arcade MegaWing.

Recommended reading:

• Mike Field's book Introducing the Spartan 3E FPGA and VHDL (FREE! With code!)
• Mealy and Tappero's Free Range VHDL (FREE!)
• Sundar Rajan's Essential VHDL : RTL Synthesis Done Right
• Roger Tokheim Digital Electronics: Principles and Applications
• Thomas Floyds Digital Logic Fundamentals (also see the latest edition)

Chris and Elecia will be recording live at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA on Monday, September 8, 2014 at 7 P.M. RSVP!

Darma (@Darma_inc) is a nascent start-up focusing on optical sensors in a seat cushion to aid in posture, stress reduction, and meditation. Chris and Elecia speak with CEO Dr. Junhao Hu and Sharif Kassatly about building a company, going through the Haxlr8r's accelerator program, and choosing a crowd funding platform.

Keep up with Darma on their webpage and on their Facebook page.

One of their advisors is NASA's Dr. Joan Vernikos, author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.

WHOOPS! We didn't record Elecia's mic this week and are taking a track direct from Chris' computer mic. Sound quality is not up to our normal standards. Sorry!

Chris (@stoneymonster) hosted the show, asking Elecia (@logicalelegance) what it was like to write her Making Embedded Systems book. (Thanks to Chris Svec for the request!)

Put in your idea to O'Reilly

Write a novel this November with NaNoWriMo

Come hear Chris and Elecia talk about writing software that can kill you at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View on Monday September 8, 2014, 7pm. Sign up!

Also, bonus quotes:

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin

"Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being." - A. A. Milne

Steve Dalton (@spidie) told us about starting a hackerspace, visiting Silicon Valley with a homebrew incubator group, and tech and fencing Australia.

Gold Coast Tech Space started off building the Rep Rap 3D printer

Steve's consulting group is Refactor

Silicon Lakes incubator just opened a call for applications to the SURF accelerator.

The Arduino-like GCDuino, available on Little Bird

Rabbits are not indigenous and not appreciated in Australia. They have the rabbit proof fenceand the Easter Billby.

Josh Bleecher Snyder (@offbymany) joined us to talk about PayPal's Beacon, being acquired, the Go programming language, BTLE, computer vision, and working at a large company after founding small ones.

Bluetooth Low Energy: A Developer's Handbook by Robin Heydon

TI CC2540 BTLE module

Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision by Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler

Gatt is a Go package for building Bluetooth Low Energy peripherals (video description by Josh from GopherCon 2014)

Card.io

Machine learning's Theano

Eigen Library for matrix math

Jen Costillo (@rebelbotJen) brings Fashion Professor Kyle Chan to discuss wearables from a different perspective.

California College of the Arts' Summer Series: Design of Wearables. Jen and Kyle's session isFashionably Practical on Wedneday, August 6th, 2014 8:15pm-10pm in San Francisco.

Sparkfun conductive ribbon and thermochromatic pigment (blue)

Athos athletic body monitoring

Cute Circuit's photonic couture

Smoke dress (neat!)

Necomimi: thought controlled cat ear headband

Reebok Checklight for detecting concussions and the Adafruit teardown

Hövding scarf airbag for cyclists