EmbeddedRelated.com

Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Key Exchange and Signatures

Mike October 21, 20231 comment

Elliptic curve mathematics over finite fields helps solve the problem of exchanging secret keys for encrypted messages as well as proving a specific person signed a particular document. This article goes over simple algorithms for key exchange and digital signature using elliptic curve mathematics. These methods are the essence of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used in applications such as SSH, TLS and HTTPS.


What does it mean to be 'Turing complete'?

Nathan Jones October 16, 20233 comments

The term "Turing complete" describes all computers and even some things we don't expect to be as powerful as a typical computer. In this article, I describe what it means and discuss the implications of Turing completeness on projects that need just a little more power, on alternative processor designs, and even security.


Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Security Considerations

Mike October 16, 2023

The security of elliptic curve cryptography is determined by the elliptic curve discrete log problem. This article explains what that means. A comparison with real number logarithm and modular arithmetic gives context for why it is called a log problem.


Handling Translations in an Embedded Project

Mattia Maldini October 13, 20234 comments

A brief walkthrough on how to handle human language translations in a low level C application. Some options are listed, each with advantages and disadvantages laid out.


Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Basic Math

Mike October 10, 2023

An introduction to the math of elliptic curves for cryptography. Covers the basic equations of points on an elliptic curve and the concept of point addition as well as multiplication.


Square root in fixed point VHDL

Jari Honkanen October 10, 2023

In this blog we will design and implement a fixed point square root function in VHDL. The algorithm is based on the recursive Newton Raphson inverse square root algorithm and the implementation offers parametrizable pipeline depth, word length and the algorithm is built with VHDL records and procedures for easy use.


Mastering Modern FPGA Skills for Engineers

Lance Harvie October 5, 2023

In the rapidly evolving tech industry, engineers must acquire proficiency in modern FPGA skills. These skills empower engineers to optimize designs, minimize resource usage, and efficiently address FPGA design challenges while ensuring functionality, security, and compliance.


Open-Source Licenses Made Easy with Buildroot and Yocto for Embedded Linux

George Emad October 2, 2023

In this article I will try to explain what are the copyrights/copyleft, what are the popular opensource software licenses, and how to make sure that your Embedded Linux system complies with them using popular build systems ; Buildroot or YOCTO projec


There are 10 kinds of people in the world

Colin Walls September 27, 2023

It is useful, in embedded software, to be able to specify values in binary. The C language lacks this facility. In this blog we look at how to fix that.


Getting Started With Zephyr: Devicetree Overlays

Mohammed Billoo September 25, 2023

In this blog post, I show how the Devicetree overlay is a valuable construct in The Zephyr Project RTOS. Overlays allow embedded software engineers to override the default pin configuration specified in Zephyr for a particular board. In this blog post, I use I2C as an example. Specifically, I showed the default I2C pins used for the nRF52840 development kit in the nominal Zephyr Devicetree. Then, I demonstrated how an overlay can be used to override this pin configuration and the final result.


Byte and Switch (Part 1)

Jason Sachs April 26, 201114 comments

Imagine for a minute you have an electromagnet, and a microcontroller, and you want to use the microcontroller to turn the electromagnet on and off. Sounds pretty typical, right?We ask this question on our interviews of entry-level electrical engineers: what do you put between the microcontroller and the electromagnet?We used to think this kind of question was too easy, but there are a surprising number of subtleties here (and maybe a surprising number of job candidates that were missing...


Endianness and Serial Communication

Stephen Friederichs May 20, 20131 comment

Endianness is a consideration that is easily overlooked in the design of embedded systems. I myself am amply guilty of this oversight. It’s something you don’t ever have to worry about if you’re only working with a single processor or two processors that have the same endianness.  You can even avoid it if you have two processors that have different endianness but never transmit data between themselves that consists of more than one byte.  It’s easy to lull...


10 Circuit Components You Should Know

Jason Sachs November 27, 20113 comments

Chefs have their miscellaneous ingredients, like condensed milk, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum. As engineers, we too have quite our pick of circuits, and a good circuit designer should know what's out there. Not just the bread and butter ingredients like resistors, capacitors, op-amps, and comparators, but the miscellaneous "gadget" components as well.

Here are ten circuit components you may not have heard of, but which are occasionally quite useful.

1. Multifunction gate (


How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part I

Jason Sachs February 26, 20128 comments

This two-part article explains five tips to make a fixed-point PI controller work well. I am not going to talk about loop tuning -- there are hundreds of articles and books about that; any control-systems course will go over loop tuning enough to help you understand the fundamentals. There will always be some differences for each system you have to control, but the goals are the same: drive the average error to zero, keep the system stable, and maximize performance (keep overshoot and delay...


Data Hiding in C

Stephen Friederichs April 20, 201317 comments

Strictly speaking, C is not an object-oriented language. Although it provides some features that fit into the object-oriented paradigm it has never had the full object-oriented focus that its successor C++ offers. C++ introduced some very useful concepts and abilities that I miss when I’m developing in ANSI C. One such concept is protected member variables and functions.

When you declare a class in C++ you can also declare member variables and functions as part of that class. Often, these...


Back from Embedded World 2019 - Funny Stories and Live-Streaming Woes

Stephane Boucher March 1, 20191 comment

When the idea of live-streaming parts of Embedded World came to me,  I got so excited that I knew I had to make it happen.  I perceived the opportunity as a win-win-win-win.  

  • win #1 - Engineers who could not make it to Embedded World would be able to sample the huge event, 
  • win #2 - The organisation behind EW would benefit from the extra exposure
  • win #3 - Lecturers and vendors who would be live-streamed would reach a (much) larger audience
  • win #4 - I would get...

Arduino robotics #1 - motor control

Lonnie Honeycutt October 13, 20133 comments
Arduino Robotics

Beginner robotics is a series of article chronicling my first autonomous robot build, Clusterbot.  This build is meant to be affordable, relatively easy and instructive.  The total cost of the build is around $50.  

1. Arduino robotics - motor control2. Arduino robotics - chassis, locomotion and power3. Arduino robotics - wiring, coding and a test run4. 

Ten Little Algorithms, Part 1: Russian Peasant Multiplication

Jason Sachs March 21, 20156 comments

This blog needs some short posts to balance out the long ones, so I thought I’d cover some of the algorithms I’ve used over the years. Like the Euclidean algorithm and Extended Euclidean algorithm and Newton’s method — except those you should know already, and if not, you should be locked in a room until you do. Someday one of them may save your life. Well, you never know.

Other articles in this series:

  • Part 1:

Introduction to Microcontrollers - Buttons and Bouncing

Mike Silva October 26, 20135 comments

What Is A Button?

To your hardware, that is.  As discussed in Introduction to Microcontrollers - More On GPIO, a button (or key, or switch, or any form of mechanical contact) is generally hooked up to a microcontroller so as to generate a certain logic level when pushed or closed or "active," and the opposite logic level when unpushed or open or "inactive."  The active logic level can be either '0' or '1', but for reasons both historical and electrical, an...


Welcoming MANY New Bloggers!

Stephane Boucher October 27, 20153 comments

The response to the latest call for bloggers has been amazing and I am very grateful.

In this post I present to you the individuals who, so far (I am still receiving applications at an impressive rate and will update this page as more bloggers are added),  have been given access to the blogging interface.  I am very pleased with the positive response and I think the near future will see the publication of many great articles, given the quality of the...


Recruiting New Bloggers!

Stephane Boucher October 16, 20157 comments

Previous calls for bloggers have been very successful in recruiting some great communicators - Rick LyonsJason Sachs, Victor Yurkovsky, Mike Silva, Markus NentwigGene BrenimanStephen Friederichs,


DSPRelated and EmbeddedRelated now on Facebook & I will be at EE Live!

Stephane Boucher February 27, 20148 comments

I have two news to share with you today.

The first one is that I finally created Facebook pages for DSPRelated.com and EmbeddedRelated (DSPRelated page - EmbeddedRelated page). For a long time I didn't feel that this was something that was needed, but it seems that these days more and more people are using their Facebook account to stay updated with their favorite websites. In any event, if you have a Facebook account, I would greatly appreciate if you could use the next 5 seconds to "like"...


Free Embedded Systems Books

Stephane Boucher May 28, 2013

Following the success of the Collaborative Writing Experiment: What are your favorite Embedded Systems Online Resources? blog post, let's try a second collaborative writing experiment.  This time, let's work on a file that will list the best embedded systems books that are available online for free.  I am not talking about books that are illegally made available for download by pirates, but books that are made available online by authors and/or publishers.

Do you know of...


Collaborative Writing Experiment: What are your favorite Embedded Systems Online Resources?

Stephane Boucher May 20, 20139 comments

Edit 22/05 - Wow, this went better than expected.  I will try submitting this blog post to Reddit/ece and see if we can get a few more interesting links before I close the document.  Thanks to everyone who contributed!  

_______

Edit 28/05 - The document is now closed to editing.  If there is a link that you would like to see added, please use the comment system at the end of this blog.  Thanks to all who participated!  

Up next, Free...


Success Story

Stephane Boucher April 24, 20132 comments

A blog post has just broken the all-time record for the number of pageviews in 24 hours on the related sites. The blog post in question is titled Data Hiding in C and was written by Stephen Friederichs.  It has been viewed by more than 7000 individuals since its publication a few days ago.  

One reason that explains the success of this blog post is the wide appeal of the subject of the article (c programming) which allowed me to


Code Snippets Winners Announced

Stephane Boucher April 12, 20132 comments

Wow, thanks a lot for all the code snippets - I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of the code that has been shared and I am very grateful.  

Now, as you know, to give momentum to the section I had announced a special reward program for code snippets submitted by the end of March.

The partner members and I had a very hard time selecting the 5 "most useful" snippets out of the more than 50 who have been submitted. 

Here's our selection:


Now on Twitter + More Code Snippets Incentives

Stephane Boucher February 28, 20134 comments

Now on Twitter!

Better late than never, the three related sites (DSPRelated, FPGARelated and EmbeddedRelated) now have their Twitter accounts.  If you are already on Twitter, please consider following.  I'll make sure to keep the tweets interesting and informative.  Plus, once in a while, I will tweet a link where the first x persons to visit will receive a gift (book, gift certificate, etc).  

@DSPRelated


New Code Snippet Section

Stephane Boucher January 15, 20134 comments

More incentives announced

Following the success of the code snippet section on DSPRelated.com, I am happy today to announce the launch of the code snippet section on EmbeddedRelated.com.  

If you have a piece of code that you would like to share with the Embedded Systems community, please go ahead and fill the form.  

If the piece of code you submit is approved, you will be sent $10 through Paypal.

If...


Two jobs

Stephane Boucher December 5, 201223 comments

For those of you following closely embeddedrelated and the other related sites, you might have noticed that I have been less active for the last couple of months, and I will use this blog post to explain why. The main reason is that I got myself involved into a project that ended up using a better part of my cpu than I originally thought it would.

edit - video of the event:

I currently have two jobs: one as an electrical/dsp engineer recycled as a web publisher and the other...