Ep. 133 - Building Robot Vacuum Cleaners: An Intro to Embedded Systems (Chris Svec)

Chris’s job sounds impressive. After over a decade working in tech, he’s designed microprocessors and now helps build robot vacuum cleaners. He’s at the intersection of hardware and software in a space called embedded systems. We explore this field, get a solid intro to working with chips, and discuss the many ways a codenewbie can start learning more about the fascinating world of embedded systems. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Arduino Raspberry Pi Hacker News Thermal runaway VHDL nvidia AMD Ringly Roomba logo (programming language) ARM Processors Hardware Description Language Intel Microprocessor Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

Chris’s job sounds impressive. After over a decade working in tech, he’s designed microprocessors and now helps build robot vacuum cleaners. He’s at the intersection of hardware and software in a space called embedded systems. We explore this field, get a solid intro to working with chips, and discuss the many ways a codenewbie can start learning more about the fascinating world of embedded systems.

Chris Svec is an embedded software engineer at iRobot where he works on the Roomba vacuuming robot and other robots. He started his career designing x86 chips and later moved up the hardware/software stack into embedded software. He knows that bugs always show up at interfaces, which is why he thinks about things like empathy and people as well as bytes and protocols. Chris has a BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University.