Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

On this episode of Interrupt Live, we'll meet Steeve Noonan, an Principle Embedded Systems Engineer at Nomo International, Inc. He'll share why he wrote the article " Why std::this_thread::sleep_for() is broken on ESP32". Interrupt Live is a series where we sit down with Interrupters contributors to hear more about their origin stories, engineering journeys, and the unique challenges that inspired their contributions. If you’ve ever wanted to hear directly from the engineers behind your favorite Interrupt posts, now’s your chance.

At Pebble, we built our dev board with automation in mind. With a four-channel FTDI chip and I2C current sensors, we could live stream power data and automatically test energy usage on every pull request. It was a software-forward approach to hardware development and a workflow we still miss.

Many hardware companies lose millions on RMAs and warranty returns, often replacing devices when a software update could have fixed the issue. Without data, it is hard to know what is really a hardware failure and what is just a software bug. Observability changes that by helping companies diagnose issues remotely, cut unnecessary returns, and keep margins intact.

It's not every day that commercial firmware gets open-sourced. In this clip, we talk about why it's so uncommon—and why it’s a huge learning opportunity when it does happen. From modern development practices to years of debugging edge cases, open-source firmware gives engineers a rare look inside real production code.

From smartwatches to earbuds, fitness tracking remains the most in-demand feature for wearables. At Pebble, we saw it firsthand—despite a programmable ecosystem, users cared most about step tracking, sleep monitoring, and health data. Now, Apple is integrating fitness features into earbuds instead of launching new devices. Will this shift how people track their health?

Building reliable embedded devices means embracing the unexpected. At Pebble, we deliberately crashed our watches to capture core dumps and debug issues—especially with Bluetooth. From loud beta build notifications to shipping asserts in production, these strategies helped us create a rock-solid product.

After years in the field, Pebble watches started failing—resources wouldn’t load, watch faces went blank, and support requests piled up. The culprit? A subtle timing issue with NOR flash wear that only surfaced as devices aged.

Pebble wasn’t built by industry veterans, it was built by hackers figuring it out as they went. Memfault founders François Baldassari and Chris Coleman, alongside Brad Murray of Beeper, dive into how Pebble’s startup culture led to a unique approach in firmware development.