Amelia's Weekly Fish Fry

Calling All Innovators: Why You Should Join the Detect and Protect Challenge

In this week’s podcast, we take a closer look at The COVID-19 Detect & Protect Challenge. Hackster.io co-founder Adam Benzion and I chat about why The United Nations Development Programme and a multinational group of companies got together to create this challenge, the goals, prizes, and details associated with this design challenge, and most importantly, how your open source designs can help make the world a better place. Also this week, we check out new flexible sensor technology developed at MIT that is hoping to make vital sign monitoring a whole lot easier. 

 

Keeping Pace: Interconnect Standards, Racing Rats, and Combatting COBOL Craziness

This week’s Fish Fry podcast is a virtual grab bag of electronic engineering goodness! In our first segment, I investigate how a group of researchers at the University of Richmond taught a group of rats how to drive and why this research could help us better understand neuroplasticity and neuropsychiatric conditions in humans. Next, Mike Walmsley (TE Connectivity) joins me to discuss the importance of interconnect standardization and what the next generation of interconnect technology will look like. Finally, I give an update on the growing need for COBOL programmers and how IBM and the Linux Open Mainframe Project have gotten together to help states navigate this COBOL craziness.

Engineering the Edge: How Intel is Looking to Train One Million Engineers

Did you know that the edge computing market is forecasted to reach almost nine billion by 2023? 
In this week’s episode of Fish Fry, Mathew Formica (Director of Edge AI Developer Scale - Intel) and I chat about the the biggest challenges in edge computing today, what's included in Intel’s OpenVino Tool Kit, and how Intel and Udacity are looking to train one million developers with their Intel Edge AI for IoT Developers Nanodegree Program. Also this week, I take a closer look at a new low-cost, low-power carbon dioxide sensing platform developed at Purdue University and how it could help drastically reduce energy usage for commercial buildings and homes alike.

How Happy is Your Chassis?

What do drone dodgeball, chassis management, and RF and optical backplane standards have in common? This week’s Fish Fry podcast of course!  First, we check out how the University of Zurich is changing the course of drone development with a little help from event cameras, specialized algorithms, and my most hated schoolyard game. Also this week, Ken Grob and Michael Munroe (Elma Electronic) join us to discuss the benefits of chassis management and why system management is not a one size fits all scenario.

Return of the Pi!

In this week’s podcast, we are talking about the newest generation of Raspberry Pi, why old coding skills are in big demand right now, and why a new class of organic batteries may be just a proton away! First, we investigate a new all-organic battery technology developed at Uppsala University that can be charged in seconds and discharged and recharged over 500 times without loss of any kind. Next, Sarah Fawcett (element14) brings us the goods on the new Raspberry Pi 4. Sarah and I chat about the details of their All-in-One Kit for Quick-Start Embedded Computing and how Sarah helped create some unique home-based Raspberry Pi applications. Finally, we take a look at why the Governor of New Jersey sent out a call for programmers with COBOL experience to join the digital frontlines.

Adventures in Satellite Security and The SpaceX Comfy Ride to the Moon

In this week’s podcast, we’ve got our eyes trained on the glittering skies. First up, we take a closer look at the spacecraft user manual for Starship, a next-generation launch vehicle currently being developed by SpaceX. We check out how Starship is going to be used, the details of its high-capacity the cargo hauler, and how Starship is going to get us to the moon in high-flying style. Also this week, we chat with Richard Jaenicke (Green Hills Software) about satellite security and vulnerability, how satellites can be hacked, and what solutions we need to implement at in order keep our satellites safely in orbit.

 

 

Systems and Bodies on Chip

In this week’s Fish Fry podcast, we take on systems on chips, body on chips, and much more!  First up, we check out how Havard’s Wyss University is hoping to change the future of modern drug development and approval. We take a closer look at how this team has pieced together ten “Organ Chips” to create a fully functioning body-on-chip platform and how this new BoC system can give us comprehensive new insights into how prospective drugs will behave throughout the human body. Also this week, I chat with Yorgos Koutsoyannopoulos (Ansys) about the challenges of chip design for 5G, radio-frequency integrated circuit design workflows and how we can all avoid electromagnetic crosstalk nightmares. 

 

Inventing Actionable Intelligence

Actionable intelligence and inference at the edge takes center stage in this week’s Fish Fry podcast. First up, we take a closer look at how drones can be taught to echolocate (like bats and dolphins) with a little help from a speaker, four microphones and a whole lot of math. Next, Nigel Forrester (Concurrent Technologies) and I chat about radio frequency signal intelligence, the benefits of a heterogeneous resource pool, and the details of Concurrent Tech's new artificial intelligence accelerator board.

 

Small is Beautiful: Trends in Small Rugged Form Factors and Making Fossil Fuels into Diamonds

What if we could use something that is universally hated to create something that most everyone loves? In this weeks podcast, we start things off with an investigation into how a group of researchers have created the first “clean process” synthetic diamond from petroleum and natural gas. Also this week, Ivan Straznicky (Curtiss-Wright) and I discuss the challenges of ruggedized small form factor designs and why he believes it is time for a new standards in this space. 

 

Optical Communications and the Internet of Neuroelectronics

Babe, You Must be a Neuron

Cause You’ve Got Some Action Potential - Popular Internet Meme

In this week’s podcast we are talking about next generation optics, signal integrity, the Internet of Neuroelectronics, and a whole lot more! To start things off, we take a closer look at how a team of researchers have enabled biological neurons and artificial neurons to communicate with each other over the first time. Next, Patrick Mechin (TechWay) and I discuss the design challenges and technology bottlenecks of 25Gps optical communication and where optics are headed in the future.