Embedded - 91: Save Us From Astronauts

Episode Date: March 4, 2015

The Linker post for this episode: How to Win the Hackaday Prize (and Other Design Challenges) Sophi Kravitz, electrical engineer and Hackaday Mythical Creature, came on to leak the new Hackaday Prize details!  On twitter, she's @SophiKravitz and often has the reins of @HackadayPrize. Sophi mentioned Matt Berggren's PCB workshop (oh! and a Solid talk too!). All three of us have been trying to make time for Contextual Electronics (now with fewer time constraints!). Hackaday Omnibus HardwareCon (startup conference in San Leandro, CA) Giant Flip-Dot Display at CES Soft Robotics Kit (and contest) The balloon project is going to FITC. You can hear the soothing sounds here. Sophi rejoins us after being on Episode 77: Goldfish, Fetch My Slippers. Also, we forgot to discuss it but Sophi was an author in the Maker Pro book, full of neat essays.

Welcome to Embedded, the show for people who love building gadgets. I'm Alicia White, here with Christopher White. Today we once again have Sophie Kravitz joining us, this time from our studio. But before we get started, I mentioned we're going to do an Element 14 blog, and that seems like it's going to start this week. It is going to be called The Linker, and for the first post, we dug a little deeper into Thingum's Todd's comment on using BlinkOne as a way to learn more about building the business side of things.

So please, come over and join us and check out what we talked about afterwards. Now, back to Sophie. Hi, Sophie. Thanks for coming back and in person this time. Hi, thanks for having me. It's fun to be here in person. You were on show 77 last November and we talked about electrical engineering and let's see. We talked about Oculus and fish. Oh yeah, and I complained about Oculus. I'm sorry about that. It was a joint complaint. Yes, that's true. It was Chris's fault. Have you been doing anything new? Do we have new things to complain about?

No, actually, I'm not going to complain this time. I promise. I work on all kinds of projects still for fun. I'm working on an art piece, which allows you to see yourself as an inflatable, a bit hard to explain, but we can talk about that if you want. I'm still a tech advisor for a small robotics startup in New York City, and we're working on a soft robotics kit that's based on Harvard's open source robotic toolkit. And I recently started working with Hackaday on the Hackaday Prize, which is my main gig right now. They're keeping me very busy, and it's really fun. So the Hackaday Prize, that was one of those things I judged last year where they were going to send somebody into space.

Yep. That's right. And here, Alicia is where you can tell everybody that you have been invited to be a judge again. Yay. Invited, agreed to sign the paper and everything. Yes. We're very happy to have you back. And so I know a little bit about it, but I don't know what we're allowed to say about it. So I should just ask as though I know nothing.

What is the Hackaday Prize? The Hackaday Prize is an engineering competition. And last year's theme, 2014, we asked people to design anything that was a connected device. That was the theme for last year. Connected device is anything pretty much that has a transmission line from one thing to another thing. This year, we're reaching out to the community and we're asking people to try to solve big engineering problems, which are things that affect a large group of people.

The analogy that I've been using is that we all love ice cream and everybody would love to have an iPhone app that can find your favorite ice cream parlor within a five-minute radius of where you are, but that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for things that can potentially affect much larger groups of people. So things like that affect water conservation,

water purification, things that run on solar. If you can make something work with the crank, those are some examples. So last year, John Such, John from Arizona, sorry. Oh, yes, John Shook. John Shook. I probably mangled your name, John. I'm sorry. Certainly I did first. Okay.

So he did water conservation as his project last year and for him it was just conserving his own local water but that project had the potential to go further because you mean one person doing it and being able to spread it is that sort of project you're thinking of? Are you thinking of people who are building small generators for use in Peru? Well, that would be amazing as well. Generators for use in Peru are absolutely welcome. But John's project is exactly the kind of project that we are looking for. However, if you were, John was a quarter finalist and he won a thousand dollars. So

he cannot resubmit that particular project. Well, having talked to him, I suspect he'll have other projects. He always has great ideas. Yes. I think he probably has something really awesome to submit again. Okay. So you're looking for people trying to save the world. That's a really big order. I think it's more like we're looking for people to take small steps towards designing things that help larger groups of people. I like that. Yeah, it's not really about saving the world, although, I mean, what does the world need to be saved? Well, I mean, what does the world need to be saved? Well, I mean, there's people who need power and water that needs conserved and all these things.

So, the world needs to be at least conserved. If there were an asteroid headed toward the Earth and somebody submitted a prize which stopped it. Like a big magnetic. Or an entry, you would probably give them the prize. I think there was one about the covering cities using 3d printer right the 3d the 3d printer bots that built domes yeah i'm pretty sure that would save us from asteroids you mean like that show that stephen king show called dome i see some blank looks yeah sorry okay there's a show that is, or I read this book about... Yeah, yeah.

Although I think it was less nefarious. I read the reviews of that show because whoever reviews it for the tour book people hates it and has to review it. And so every week they write a review about how much they hated this week's. And I like love reading that part i haven't watched the show but i read the book and the book was very very good yeah yeah i bet it was anyway so people saving us from astronauts could enter but people i really did say that people saving us from astronaut ice cream? People saving us from asteroids.

Yes. They could enter, but in the meantime, if there are no asteroids to be saved from, we want little steps. Yes, we want little steps towards making large community decisions? I went to the IEEE Global Humanitarian Conference about 18 months ago. What's that? It was educational, but not necessarily in good ways. One of the big things that I kept hearing there was how many people want to put technology in underserved locations,

in deep African deserts or in Amazonian forests. And the technology did not survive for very long. And it caused problems because in order to use a cell phone in order to track your cow's progress, you needed a way to power the cell phone. And then the power needed to have security around it. And it was one of those, I don't know why she ate the fly. And you end up having this whole infrastructure in order to get something that used to be solved by an eight-year-old boy and a dog, and now you have to have security guards in order to safeguard this infrastructure. How much are we going to be judging on practicality? That's a really good question. I think that in this prize round, we don't have a specific thing for the judges to look at practicality, but you will be using your judgment as an overall thing, and that's probably a good thing to consider.

Sweet. So if Hackaday does another interview on the judges, I can say, look, if I think your thing is not going to withstand the dust storms that you're trying to go into, I'm not giving you full credit. Yes. There'll be a separate, actually last year, I actually did for a while have a separate column of like special Elysia goo. Because I wanted to be able to get my rankings the right way. And then I realized that that was the same as one of the other ones. And I deleted my column because I realized I was like double counting novelty or whatever the category was. Originality.

Originality. Yes. New this year for the Hackaday Prize, we're going to be introducing a product round. And so that will be a prize for the best product. So people who have entered the Hackaday Prize can opt in to the best product or to the product round. And the winner of that will receive $50,000, six months in a space in Pasadena,

and introductions to venture capitalists and other influential people to do with manufacturing their product. And the title of Hackaday Incubator Firsties? It's called Best, it's the product round, and it will be called Best Product. Very original. Sorry. But you don't have to have a product.

You don't have to be headed to a product. No, not at all. You absolutely do not. That's sort of a parallel thing. It's a parallel thing. Yes. And we have separate product you don't be have to be headed to a product no not at all you absolutely do not that's sort of a parallel thing it's a parallel thing yes and we have separate product judges how'd you get um roped into this you hadn't talked about it at all in november i didn't know about it in november um they posted hackaday posted a very strange job. I don't ever apply for jobs that are posted because I normally work for myself, but I read Packaday pretty regularly

and they advertised an odd job that was called Mythical Creature. So of course I had to read more and it sounded like a public relations job in our community. And I'm pretty into our community and I do a lot of stuff with with like do a lot of showing projects. So I thought it'd be really fun and I'd have an opportunity to meet more interesting people.

And honestly, I was a little bit lonely four years in my own lab by myself, not really like working with other people. I thought it would be just good to do something different. And so you went on board with Hackaday. And that's still, I mean, they're taking up a lot of time right now, but you have a lot of other things going on. They're not your sole source of amusement. And then one of the first things I noticed you did was that release party for the Hackaday Omnibus, their paper edition.

Which was a really cool thing, by the wayaday Omnibus, their paper edition. Which is a really cool thing, by the way. The Omnibus. Yeah, you guys got, you have an Omnibus. Yes. Yeah, Omnibus is really cool and the illustrations are beautiful. And they took some of the Hackaday blog posts and turned it into a magazine and it's, it feels nice. It does, it's all good quality paper and good quality illustrations and nice articles and they of course after a year of hackaday

articles you do get to choose out a couple that are especially good and that was the neat part yeah um but this party was pretty fun chris didn't go. Chris is rolling his eyes over here. But it was, I don't usually go. I mean, it was in San Francisco. It's like, sure, it's a 45-minute drive when it's nice, and it took me two hours to get there. Wow. I'm impressed. Thanks for coming.

That was why a lot of the South Bay people were like, do we have to? Okay, fine. We'll take the train. We'll take it together. But only because we can drink on the train. We couldn't drink if we drove. You had champagne in these cute little cans with the bendy straw. It was awesome. What is happening to this show? We did have champagne on the train. And there was a little bit of champagne left over in my backpack when we got there. And I got to have some.

It was very nice. But it was one of those parties with sort of famous people, except I knew quite a few of them. And it was an open invite. How did you get so many awesome people to show up? I emailed everybody, a lot of people individually, since I was going to be in town, and I wanted to see people, and we were having a party, so that's a good reason to invite people to come and visit. We all know each other from Maker Faires and other conferences,

and Mike Stisch and Chris Gamble also invited a lot of people. Chris Gamble didn't go. No, but we got him to invite people. He's a proxy inviter. Right. We also opened it up to the community. I mean, on the hackaday.io, which is a site for posting projects, you can sort by location. So I individually invited people who had put Bay Area as their location

San Francisco Oakland I mean it wasn't you had to be invited to go no you it was on Twitter and a few other places that if you wanted to go you just had to say yes I want to go um I I have never seen that many of my podcast guests located in the same area. We did it just for you. And it was funny because last November was my birthday and I had a little birthday party and there were lots of embedded guests. And that was very amusing. I was so amazed. But this was like, there was Jen from RebelBot and Emil from Tindy, Micah with Fade Candy and Mike Stish and Mark from Salier and Star.

Although Star Simpson was only in the first episode, hopefully she'll come back soon, but she was there so she counts. It would be nice to hear more from Star. Yeah, she does a talk about FPGAs and personalities and I totally want to talk to her about that. Oh wow. And Lenore from EMSL and you and so we had a huge total of people and I picked up a lot of other business cards so if we have the same party again in a year I will have even more people I

know there. It'll be like exponential. But it was like name dropping with real people well we'll be doing the party again actually probably during maker fair well yeah but maker fair oh my god so many things happen at bay area maker fair um lane from osh park is coming on next week oh good he has a party that is usually involved with Maker Faire, so we'll see if he's having a party too. You could spend that whole weekend partying without ever actually going to Maker Faire. Yeah.

Yeah. So, how did you get involved with that? With the party? I was pretty new with Hackaday, and Matt Bergen was running the party, and I was helping him. And so, you know, welcome to Hackaday and Matt Bergeron was running the party and I was helping him. And so, you know, welcome to Hackaday. Here's a welcome party. Design it yourself. No, they were launching the Omnibus and they said, oh, if you want to invite people, go ahead. And then somehow I ended up making the invitation and then I started to send it out. And that's pretty much how I was involved.

It was all downhill from there. Right. And other people ordered all the food and Matt did a lot of the setting up. Those dolmas were really good. Yeah, that's what I heard. So, Supply Frame owns Hackaday and a couple other things. You've been, I think I saw from a tweet or something, you've been hanging out with some of the Supply Frame people as well, the Hackaday people. I don't always know which is which or if they're all just sort of mixed together. They are two separate companies.

The Supply Frame office is in Pasadena, so you probably see some tweeting sometimes about being in this really sunny place and it being really hard to get any work done. I seriously don't know how people get work done in California. I mean, in New York, it's snowing every day. None of us do. It's all a scam. It must be, right?

We outsource everything to other countries. I just don't understand. It's so nice out all the time. So Supply Frame is in Pasadena, and they have an office in San Francisco. So that is where, if I am in town, I've been in town twice in the past few weeks, that would be where I would work out of rather than going to a Starbucks or something with my laptop. And while I've been here, I took a workshop with Matt Bergeron about designing PCBs and it's a three-part workshop and I took the first part

it was very very interesting um I designed boards but you're an electrical engineer by training I am and also by hobby and by work and I design boards frequently and I really don't design high speed boards so my boards generally work but I also am pretty aware that I don't design high-speed boards. So my boards generally work, but I also am pretty aware that I don't know a lot of things about board layout theory. So how big should your vias be? How wide should your traces be? Besides the obvious current-carrying thing,

which I design mostly industrial machines, industrial equipment, so current is actually a big consideration. But what is the inductance? What is parasitic capacitance? What do all these things actually mean? And are they just words that people throw around or are they important when you're doing a layout? So this was part one, this workshop of that kind of board layout theory.

And some of what Matt taught was just the mechanics of laying out the board because the class is open to all levels. But I learned so many things. It was pretty intense. It went from 10 in the morning, we didn't stop until eight, and only an hour break. Ouch. Yeah, yeah. It was really intense. At the end, I was like, wow, my head hurts. But it was great. And I'm hoping that part two is when I'm in town again. So did it have a project-based focus? Like, okay, we're going to work on this thing?

Or was it all just a firehose? No, it wasn't a firehose at all. It was really well organized. He chose a, I think it was a small power supply. He gave us the design. It wasn't like, go and design the circuit. It was like, I think it was a small power supply. He gave us the design. It wasn't like, go and design the circuit. It was like, here are some parts, put them together. It was a fuse and a couple of capacitors.

It was a DC to DC converter. That's all, just a power converter. We drew the board and did the board layout and talked about ground planes and why you need ground planes and why you need ground planes. Like all of these things that are, I mean, things that I do because I know that I'm supposed to do them, but I don't really know the reasons by why a lot of things. I mean, besides a lot of electrical engineers, and most of us, I think we go to the data

sheet, we look at the layout of the chip that we're using. They give a suggested layout, they give a suggested passives around the data sheet, we look at the layout of the chip that we're using. They give a suggested layout, they give a suggested passives around the chip, and we just use that. And if you're in, like, I'm usually in a big rush. Like, I have a client, they want the thing done. Not necessarily Googling around for, like, why exactly is this via in this exact spot? Okay, yeah, it's letting, it's, you know, it's a heat, it's letting heat out or something, but I don't really know exactly why it's in this exact spot. Okay, yeah, it's letting heat out or something, but I don't really know exactly why it's in this one area.

So his workshop is about that and sort of encouraged thinking about that kind of thing. It was great. And you and I, Alicia, have talked about taking Chris Gamble's class. Yeah, Contextual Electronics. Yeah. And that's an online, a couple hours at a time sort of class. And it's got homework and you design the bench buddy. Yeah, he's doing a different format this time.

That's right, it just restarted. Yeah, and I think it's, actually I don't want to, we should Google it. I think it's like videos that you can do on your own pace. Yes. Yeah, which is a little easier to swallow than for me anyway than a time commitment so the one day workshop that worked really well for me and knowing that there's a second and third part that's going to get more uh more into it is going to be really good i'm sorry 10 a.m to 8 p.m is not a one day workshop that's a three-day workshop crammed into a day.

So you were in town for that, and you were also in town to go to this hardware conference, hardware con. Yes, hardware con. But it didn't really sound like it was like an embedded systems conference. It was more markety? It was. Who was it? Yeah, it was a conference. I believe that the attendees were startups, hardware startups. And so they were at a place of what do I do now that I have a product and not even a product that was like not, they were definitely in product,

not in prototype. So they had something beyond napkin scotch, way beyond. And in a lot of cases, the people that I met were technical, but they had been working with contracted engineers to build something. And so the thing that they would have, for example, I saw something that was, I've forgotten what, a tracker. There is already a tracker out in the market, something that you put into your luggage or onto your keys so that you don't lose it. Not the one with the luggage, but say you want to, you clip it onto your keys and then it beeps your phone or something if you lose your keys. So this was a much smaller one. That's a good example of one of the things that I saw. But it was done. And when I wanted to take pictures of the thing inside, like he opened it up to show how big the battery

was or how little the battery was. So I pull out my phone because I want to take a picture of a circuit board. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, you can't take pictures of that. So yeah. Kind of a different experience. Yeah. Yeah. But I had a really good time. I mean, I saw a few talks about marketing your product and the psychology about marketing. And I thought it was, it was very interesting. It's not, it's not my expertise and never will be, but it's very interesting to think about once you get to the product, when you have a product, what do you do with it? And they also talked a lot about getting marketers involved at the very beginning so that you design your product with the consumer experience in mind. And that, honestly, as a technical person, I often think, I don't really understand marketing.

So yeah, I'm going to choose my words carefully. And I would not necessarily, if I were designing a product, think to get a marketing person involved in the very beginning. But they made a lot of very good points about that, about how the marketing person is connected with the people who are going to buy your product. And therefore, it's really important to not just have a good idea, but tailor your good idea for the consumer experience. I don't know about you, but as an engineer working in,

you know, when I worked full time, the marketing team was always, oh, those guys, you know, they're going to make up something and they're going to, you know, fluff up the product. It was never a really good relationship of respect. And being a little bit older and having seen a lot of companies, it's, you're right. It's, this is kind of a magic area that we don't understand. And maybe we should at least learn enough about it to not think of it as something that's

completely unnecessary or superfluous, but it's actually really deeply important because you can have the best widget in the world. And if you don't understand who you're selling it to or why or what it does, and oftentimes, I don't know about you, but I've worked on things and, well, we don't know what that does. Well, it's a thing. We should try to sell it after we figure out what it's for so yeah it's i think it's important for us to learn a little bit at least i've definitely worked on some products that have gotten canceled or didn't just didn't go anywhere afterwards and they were completely engineer driven and it was really super fun to work on but it is not fun actually to be on the tail end of a product that is not doing well.

Well, then it's no fun to do all this work. And even if you get paid for it, to have it go nowhere. I love seeing my software on other people's wrists or in their pockets or even at Target on toy shelves. It's just, there's something very, very cool thinking, I did that and somebody's using it. Yeah. And it's so depressing when my projects don't go to the next step. It is very strange to see my product on Amazon with reviews and see it in ads and stuff on Gizmodo and there's a screen

and I did that for better or for worse. I knew that we were going to see it in Costco yesterday. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it's a cool experience. And marketing is what gets those things to those spots. And also helps us develop the right features. I know that I've definitely worked with sales and marketing and been resentful because they're asking for features, which basically means more work on Saturdays for me. But in reality,

a lot of times they're coming back with what the consumer actually wants to see, which keeps us all working. Yeah. It goes back to that blog post from Element 14 that Chris wrote for last week, which is last week's show, which is engineers aren't necessarily getting better by doing more engineering. Sometimes we need to get better by doing all the other things so we understand what we need to do better in engineering. So, yeah, that blog post hasn't posted yet, but it may have posted by this time the show goes up. And actually, you got me involved with Element 14 more than anyone. Really?

Well, I had been talking with Sagar Jethani, and he and I had kind of, you know, do you want to blog? Well, I don't know. Do you pay? Well, yeah, but, and we kind of went back and forth, but we hadn't like, okay, I'm going to do this. And, um, and then you and I got to talking and I'm like, oh, all right. It isn't that bad. It doesn't have to be an advertisement for their products. It just has to be something people want to read. Element 14 is awesome. I think it's a really good site and I really like writing for them. And you're still doing the Quit Your Day Job? I am. Do you do other writing for them? No. Would you consider that your day job? No. So you don't need to quit it. Right.

Is Hackaday your day job? It's taking up a lot of time. Don't quit it yet. No, I like Hackaday. So there have been a couple of other judges announced. Have there been? I know David Jones over at EEV Blog has said he's going to be a judge for the new one. He was for the last one, too.

That's right. Is anybody else? I just leaked that you are going to be a judge, and I don't think anyone else has said yet. But I believe that people will be saying that they are judges this week. You've got more yeses. You just aren't saying anything for anybody else. Well, we're launching next week. Yeah, that's right.

This is actually, we are leaking here, aren't we? We are. Like a sieve. We're saying everything. Just a little faucet. Right. Are there other things that you can tell us about the Hackaday Prize, as long as we're, you know. I can tell you that we are offering space again as our grand prize because the last year's grand prize winner didn't take space.

I will, I do want to tell you something about the last year's winner, SatNogs, that they made a ground connected station, basically an open source antenna. They took their prize money. They took the $196,418 instead of the trip to space because there were 10 of them, 10 engineers that won the prize. And they made a foundation with it. And so they're continuing to make their ground station and continuing to work on it,

which is a pretty awesome use of the prize money. Yeah, and as you talked about things that improve the world, that one was sort of on the edge for me because they are doing some really neat stuff. They're sharing information that wouldn't otherwise get shared. And the satellite, I don't know, it makes it easier to talk to weather satellites. And it was very, very well documented.

So it's going to be hard for me to say, well, this obviously can help you save the world. And this obviously is not, because there are so many ways. Does teaching reading count? It does. So education, moving education forward is one of the things that would absolutely count. And I believe that we at Hackaday and our community will be helping people to make their projects larger than they may have already thought about. Because you can always look at somebody's thing, unless it's an iPhone app for ice cream, and say, hey, you can put a crank on that thing. I mean, a power crank, for example, right?

Or you can make that thing use less power, or you can make that thing do something different that is going to affect a larger group of people. So we're going to be doing some collaborative stuff too on the project site and we'll be rolling that out over the next week or so. Ah, yes. I did hear rumors about that. I'm excited for that because I need a software engineer to help me or to partner with me, to collaborate with me on this

crazy project. You can't enter, can you? No. I didn't think so. And that project is not a project that's for the Hackaday Prize. That's the balloon one. Yes. Okay, so tell us about the balloon one. It blows up balloons, and there's a connect,

and maybe I should let you describe it. So in the big vision, and I don't want anyone to hold me to making this big vision because it's very expensive to make this. It's a wall of balloons. Each one corresponds to one pixel. And there will be some cameras, like a Kinect, that puts out depth data. So in front of the wall, there might be three cameras. At CES, we all saw the Uvu wall with the flip dots. So I'm going to go back to that.

I just described that for everybody. There was a wall, a giant wall of maybe 20 feet long by about 10 feet high, and it was all full of flip dots, and they had three or four PrimeSense depth data cameras in front of it. And if you looked into the camera, the wall reacted to your face. So if you smiled at the camera, the PrimeSense camera picked up your smiling or making a round O with your mouth and broadcast that onto the wall. And so there's actually a post, Mike Stish wrote an awesome post about it on Hackaday.

So he talked to them and they explained a little bit about how it works. And it's very software heavy, this project. So I want to do the same thing but use balloons and solenoids to mimic people's expressions or to respond to people's expressions also very software heavy i happen to have been gifted 75 solenoids recently which is a significant uh it's a significant amount of money that you know to be given a bunch of solenoids that are already mounted on manifolds um to have all that stuff means that i can make a very good sized demo with 70 a wall of just 75 pixels which you know i can just kind of make the thing undulate so to speak as a first round and so i have this idea there were these old things you used to see in museum stores that were little tiny pins.

Spencer gifts. And that you'd put your hand in and the pins would come out and the other side would be what your hand looked like. And so it's going to be like that except balloons instead of pins. And if I make an angry enough face, I can make the balloons pop, right? Potentially, yes. See, that's the cool thing. Right. So actually, a? Potentially, yes. Yeah, see, that's the cool thing. Right. So actually, a word about that, pin screens, those were invented by Ward Fleming, who lives near me and is a friend.

He invented that like 25 years ago at the Exploratorium. I look at those and I think, what I really need now are little tiny motors so I can make it into a screen. I'm pretty sure people have done that. I think he has worked on something like that. It sounds so cool. Yeah, it's a really cool toy. So as far as the balloons go, I don't know yet. I made a demo with eight balloons,

and the sound that the balloons make blowing up and deflating, it's really beautiful. It sounds crazy, like breathing. It sounds really, really good to me. I don't know. I'm imagining things that don't sound good, so. Well, I have it up on Google+. You can actually go and listen to it.

Oh, cool. Yeah. I'll have to link to that. And so the solenoid, if it's open, it's pumping air? And if it's closing, it's releasing. And I pop little tiny pinholes into the balloons to equalize them because it actually blows up at a faster rate than it can release because it's not a vacuum pump that's sucking the air out of it it's just a vent if that makes sense so it pushes air in at a certain PSI, but it releases just at atmospheric.

So at this moment, anyway, while I'm working on the demos, I'm poking pinholes into the balloons so that they release a little faster. And so when you want it to be full, you blow it up at the same rate that you're losing from the pinholes. Yeah. And when you want it to be empty, you stop that you're losing from the pinholes. Yeah. And when you want it to be empty, you stop blowing it up entirely and it leaks out. Yeah. And if you want it to be half full, you blow it up a little bit. And I can put, in a future version of this, I can put pressure sensors on it. And so then it'll be like, if I'm blowing the balloon up at 20 PSI for two seconds, it's equivalent to half full or quarter full, which will then correspond to the depth data.

Have you considered putting it on the floor so that people can crowd surf it? Oh my God, that'd be amazing. I hadn't until you just said that now. Most comfortable bed ever. Right? You just lie back and it'll kind of move around. Doing it in a horizontal way would take away a lot of the difficulty. Because it's going to be a lot to run lines on a hanging frame.

So making it lie down would be a lot easier. We've already solved your problems. Between that and writing a little bit of code at lunch, we're good. It's true. You did write a whole bunch of code for me at lunch. I don't think anything that fits on a post-it note counts as a whole bunch. Exactly. Well, yeah.

So that is going to a museum or your office? What's the purpose? I mean, it's cool enough that I would just want one. I'm not sure where it will go. I may have it with me at Maker Faire in the Bay Area in May. It's going to be, assuming I finish it, it'll be at FITC in Toronto, Canada. And that is April 12th through the 14th, I believe. What is that? That is a technology conference, art and technology conference. So I'll be speaking there. And I'll also be doing a panel about quitting your day job. It's like you have a theme here.

I do, yes. And especially after I went and got a job. It's kind of, I feel a little bit fraudulent, but it's such a cool job that maybe it's okay. You've been traveling a lot. Is it because of Hackaday and getting the prize organized or is it just new job travel? Did one in Chicago. Actually, I was in Chicago this week, earlier this week, and I went to the University of Illinois and talked to students about engineering in general and also about the prize.

And the first meeting that I went to was with a group, a women in tech group, and that was pretty fun, like a tech tea, and pretty intimate also. There weren't a lot of people there, about eight women who were electrical engineers, biomedical engineers, and computer science majors. And then after that, at night, we had pizza with IEEE. God, there's been so much pizza on this trip. It's funny.

I was going to offer to make you pizza for lunch. And they're like, no, no, we'll just go out. I'm glad I didn't make pizza I'm glad too really so this group at IEEE at the University of Illinois University of Illinois is incredible they have so much equipment and resources and they do hackathons every weekend it seems like so the students there when they come out I think are really well equipped because they're building stuff all the time like. So the students there, when they come out, I think are really well equipped because they're building stuff all the time. The students that I met from both groups, the women in tech group and the IEEE group, seem to build stuff. They physically are making stuff all the time. So that was pretty awesome. The group from IEEE just won their hackathon.

They made a drinking game. Surpriseathon. They made a drinking game. Surprise, college students making a drinking game. That one may not be a good entry into this new Hackaday Prize. No, it's probably not a good entry, but they're probably going to have a Kickstarter and it's probably going to get like a gajillion dollars because it's pretty cool.

Glass turns, they have all these connected glasses and they turn colors if you answer the thing right. And so when it turns a color, you drink. I mean, I don't know. I'm maybe too old to really get it, but it's kind of cool. It's way beyond ping pong balls. It's way beyond ping pong balls. That is true. So then after that, I visited a hardware co-working space. And that was pretty interesting. They had a lot of different projects and stuff. And then after that, in Chicago, I visited some friends who have this

company called Power Tower. And Power Tower is a tower that has every kind of charger imaginable. So every kind of charging end. And I think to most of us, we think of that as being ubiquitous. We see that now everywhere. So they started this company about five years ago. And so I visited their offices for the first time in Chicago. And that was actually really, really cool because I don't have a lot of friends who have startups. And it was cool to see an actual startup as a business with a kitchen and a coffee machine and like a conference room. And they let me camp out in their conference room and work for the afternoon. And then like, we also did a lot of brainstorming about an interesting state for a charger. So when you plug your charger into the phone, the charger, if it's on, you have state on. And you also have on

charging. But how do you know when it's just plugged into the phone and it's not actually working? Like there's no exchange of power. Look at the phone. Yeah, the phone is a little lightning bolt. Right. Yeah, but what if the little lightning bolt yeah right yeah but what what if you if you don't well no i mean what you were looking at the phone but the there's nothing if there's a person not there right looking at the phone so anyway we brainstormed quite a bit about things like putting a light sensor on the end of the um the plug and or a mechanical sensor like a piezo mechanical sensor that was pretty fun like wasted

a good couple hours there yakking about different sensors on the end of charging ends and then we had a meet up at the pumping station in chicago pumping station one is a big hacker space and it's pretty amazing hacker space and there's pictures all over the place. I think I'm going to write something about it up. It snowed a lot, and about 40 or 50 people showed up. It was kind of amazing. I guess people in Chicago don't care about snow. It snows every day. At least 20 people gave talks. So we did this format where we were doing lightning talks. It was awesome. There were so many good projects. I felt so happy to just be there surrounded by all these cool projects. And next week you're going to South by Southwest. Yes, I go home for a week and then South by Southwest, yes.

And is that still Hackaday or is that more of your own stuff? No, it's Hackaday. Man, you really do have a day job. Sorry. But you are having a good time with them. I am having a good time. I mean, really, get to go to Pumping Station, get to go to South by Southwest. It's pretty cool. As far as jobs go. Right. I think- I'm sorry, I have to go to South by Southwest. It's just my job. I'm sorry, I have to go to Bay Area Maker Faire.

Oh, you mean go talk to all of the college students about how cool engineering is? And by the way, you should all come and be part of our Hackaday thing? Yeah, as far as jobs go. It's pretty cool. I think you once accused me of, you were like, you make it sound all like waffles and Mai Tais. That was at CES. Yes, when you were at CES. Every time you guys tweeted, you were at breakfast or you were drinking Mai Tais.

And there was once where it was both. On the other hand, travel is not always fun. So thank you for wandering around, not making any of the rest of us do it. Yeah, you're welcome. But you said you don't hang out with startups very often. I don't. And we live in the Bay Area, and it's like, well, if you don't have a startup in your garage,

you're obviously not trying hard enough. That's what it feels like sometimes. Sometimes people set up startups in your garage and you don't even know. Yeah. It does definitely seem like there are a lot of startups here. So it's just not a part of my day-to-day life. I really only have been working with established companies, very small established companies, equipment manufacturers

that have been around for 20 or 30 years and kind of old school, all the companies that I work with and just really have very little knowledge of startups. It's interesting. Going back to the Hackaday party and the Omnibus party and all the people that I sort of knew who had been guests or actually there was already one who was a scheduled guest. Um, and that I did feel like I sort of knew them, but we get into this engineering thing where we all assume everybody has all of our knowledge and all of theirs. And so I, you know,

I sort of between quit your day job and your maker projects and all of that, I'm like, oh yeah, she's totally, she's in the startup culture. No. And it's funny to hear you say that that's not true. Yeah. It's kind of nice because we all should have different skills. We all did different things. The other thing that I'm noticing now in the startup culture, and I think I might have a different view about it in several months, but right now I feel that the startups that I'm meeting have finished products. It's my personal interest to work on stuff for the first time that's an R&D thing or something that's starting from nothing.

So my interest in the product life cycle is more before it becomes a product. Sort of like when I let you look at my trigonometry homework. Yes, I like looking at your trigonometry homework. That's so not a project. Right. It's just baby thing. Yes. That is the fun part. It's always

the fun part. Every startup I've been at, the first 6 to 12 weeks were always the amazing, super fun part. Every startup I've been at, the first six to 12 weeks were always the amazing, super fun part. Yeah. It's fun to get to the first prototype. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even to the fifth prototype.

And then I tend to lose interest after that. I joined a project this winter before Christmas and it was a, oh my God, we have to ship and our firmware engineer left sort of project. And so I did, I closed it for them. You know, I finished, I got firmware update working and we got there in production. I released product, hopefully the last production code yesterday. Good job. I heard it's the last one. Good job. I really do.

But it was not as much fun as this, oh, we have this napkin sketch. Can you see if it's going to work sort of idea? I love that. Do you ever tell people, no, it's not going to work? I try not to. In part because I could very well be wrong, and I would hate to be discouraging and wrong. I would rather be encouraging and wrong if I have to choose one.

And because there have been so many times when I've said, no, that's not possible, and then gone away for a couple of hours and thought, oh, yeah, well, if you did that, I guess it'd work. And so I try now, even when I'm like, oh, that's so never going to work. Well, that's a good idea. Let me think about it a little while longer before I crush your dreams. So I try to be more encouraging, at least in the beginning. Although, you know, when they want it next month for cheap and in high volume i'm like yeah you know there's this little triangle i draw for people here let me draw it for you

right you can have good or cheap but not both no you can have good and cheap. You just can't have fast. Right. Yeah. You can only have two out of three. Yeah. Definitely. Do you ever, I mean, you seem very encouraging. Yes, I do actually. I am encouraging, but if I think something is really just a bad idea, I will say. And can you give us examples of really bad ideas? This is where I lead you down into the path that you regret, isn't it?

I know. I think I'm actually not going to go down this path. Sorry. That's very wise of you. It is, yeah. To say things, yeah. I'm not. When you started doing your introduction, you mentioned soft robotics.

Oh, yeah mentioned soft robotics. Oh yeah, soft robotics. And so this is like the Big Hero 6 Baymax, right? It's not. It's more with elastomers. So Big Hero 6, if anyone in New York City, we have the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and those are I think they're nylon with plastic backing and they're blown up that way. I mean, that's what they're made out of. The Harvard Soft Robotics Toolkit uses soft robots made with elastomers,

which are two-part silicones. So it's a little bit of a different process. So it feels like hot glue, except not hot? It feels like a little bit stretchy. We are making the control system. We're not making the robot itself. I still want to know what elastomers are. Oh, I see.

They're sort of like gaskets. What? That rubbery, gaskety material? No, no, no. Last time I said material material. Yeah, it's a material that's a two-part silicone. So an elastic material. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay. Instead of fabric. Is that how soft ones were made before? See, I always think of soft robots as made out of paper or blow-up things. I think that there's... Yeah, like Baymax, right? Wasn't that such a good movie?

That was such a good movie. I can't believe... From the trailers, I was like, oh, we can see it on video eventually. But once I saw it, I'm like, this wasn't what I expected at all. That was a really, really good movie. I took my 10-year-old niece, and she liked it too. I took my husband. Did you like it, Chris?

He didn't take me. Okay, he took me. To the living room. We're editing this. I doubt it. Yes, no, I liked it. It was very, very good. I think I liked it when she did.

The soft robotics is a pretty new field. So I think there's a lot of research still to be done. And specifically the company that I'm working with, we are just making the Harvard open source soft robotics toolkit manufacturable. So there's some design work, of course, because when people post open source projects, they're not done. And so that's what it is. And do they move? Is it like an inchworm move?

The consumer of the kit needs to design their own robot. This is just the control system. So it's a kit that contains a compressor and up to four solenoids, manifolds, some MOSFETs, like a little driver circuit that we purchase. It actually turns out to be a lot cheaper to purchase other people's MOSFET drivers than it does to make your own, which is kind of depressing, actually.

I mean, I know a MOSFET is like, whatever, a dollar. Yeah. But somehow, you know, when you add all the terminal blocks and the time and the board and everything, you can buy these pretty awesome little boards that are opto-isolated for $18. And they have four. And they sell millions of them and you don't. Right.

And so it works all the time, too. There's that other aspect of it. And it's also, I mean, a MOSFET board is, I've designed so many of them, it's not like it's something that would be like a fun challenge. Yes. Although it is challenging enough that you need a good one and you can't just let your software engineer design it. You need a MOSFET board that actually works, but it's also been done so much that there's no fun left.

Yes. So I typed in Harvard Soft Robotics, and I ended up with this 2015 soft robotics competition. Yes, that's right. They are having a competition. And so I think anybody listening now, you know, that's already public, but the Hackaday is new. And if you really, really work at it, you might find like an inchworm that cleans up plutonium or something.

It'll be really cool. You should make this. This is, I will vote for you as Hackaday judge. Should anybody take me up on my idea of cleaning up plutonium with a soft robot? Yes. Yes. This should be easy, right? Poor robot.

I feel bad. Yeah. I know. Really, poor robot. You're right. I should be nicer to the robots. Someday they'll have their power over me. So it sounds like you've been talking about the Hackaday Prize a lot. When is it all being revealed? Which hasn't been revealed here.

When is the rest being revealed? We are launching officially on March 9th, which is next Monday. And we would like to express to listeners, if anyone wants to help get the word out with Twitter or they want to hear more about the prize, I'll be pushing out updates on Hackaday Prize at Hackaday Prize. And I think that's it. Cool. Well, you know, I will certainly talk about it because I think it's a neat competition because saving the world is cool, but also learning things is cool, and Hackaday is a good way to do that.

And that nicely large prize is definitely worth a few hours of time, at least to think about. And watching all those projects, you learn a lot, even if you're not participating. I learned so much. Just seeing all those, what other people are doing and how they did it.

And yeah, I think it's a great opportunity to get ideas for your own projects. And even if you're not the prize type. You can also just sign up and put your ideas out. We're going to be having prizes for ideas without actually entering. You can just sign up on the project site on hackaday.io, put your ideas up, and we're going to be giving out small prizes, things like T-shirts and stickers just for ideas in the beginning.

And there will also be small prizes for actual projects that will be things like PCB boards and laser cutting coupons and 3D printing coupons, things to help people push their projects forward. So even if you're not in it to win it, you may want to be in it to... To get project, to move your project forward. That doesn't rhyme.

Yeah. No. Although the Hackaday shirt is one of my favorites because they use really soft shirts. They do? Yeah. Sophie, do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

No, I have talked quite enough, I think. Leaked quite enough. Yes. Well, my guest has been Sophie Kravitz, electrical engineer, Hackaday Prize lead, or mythical creature, and owner-operator at Mix Engineering and author of the Quit Your Day Job blog series over at Element 14. We will be joining her at Element 14 with our linker blog. And thank you to Sophie for introducing us to the Bluestamp Engineering folks. Robin and Dave were great guests.

Also, thank you to Christopher White for co-hosting and producing. If you'd like to say hello, hit the contact link on embedded.fm. Email us, show at embedded.fm. If you'd like a say hello, hit the contact link on embedded.fm. Email us, show at embedded.fm. If you'd like a sticker, send a note. I really will send those out pretty quickly. Maybe. No more than three weeks. I promise.

I do have a final thought for this week. I was really sad to hear about Leonard Nimoy, so I thought it was only appropriate that I have this from him. I had an embarrassing experience once, many years ago. I was invited to go to Caltech and was introduced to a number of very brilliant young people who were working on interesting projects. And they'd say to me, what do you think? Expecting me to have some very sound advice.

And I would nod very quietly, very sagely. I would say, you're on the right track.