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The 2024 Embedded Online Conference

Flood Fill, or: The Joy of Resource Constraints

Ido Gendel November 13, 2023

When transferred from the PC world to a microcontroller, a famous, tried-and-true graphics algorithm is no longer viable. The challenge of creating an alternative under severe resource constraints is an intriguing puzzle, the kind that keeps embedded development fun and interesting.


Embedded Systems Roadmaps

Nathan Jones November 9, 2023

What skills should every embedded systems engineer have? What should you study next to improve yourself as an embedded systems engineer? In this article I'll share with you a few lists from well-respected sources that seek to answer these questions, with the hope of helping provide you a path to mastery. Whether you've only just finished your first Arduino project or you've been building embedded systems for decades, I believe there's something in here for everyone to help improve themselves as embedded systems engineers.


Embedded Systems Co-design for Object Recognition: A Synergistic Approach

Charu Pande November 4, 2023

Embedded systems co-design for object recognition is essential for real-time image analysis and environmental sensing across various sectors. This methodology harmonizes hardware and software to optimize efficiency and performance. It relies on hardware accelerators, customized neural network architectures, memory hierarchy optimization, and power management to achieve benefits like enhanced performance, lower latency, energy efficiency, real-time responsiveness, and resource optimization. While challenges exist, co-designed systems find applications in consumer electronics, smart cameras, industrial automation, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles, revolutionizing these industries. As technology advances, co-design will continue to shape the future of intelligent embedded systems, making the world safer and more efficient.


What is Pulse Width Modulation and How Does It Work?

Lance Harvie November 2, 2023

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is a technique used to control the average voltage supplied to a device or component by adjusting the width of a series of pulses. It works by rapidly turning a signal on and off at a specific frequency. The crucial element of PWM is the duty cycle, which represents the percentage of time the signal is “on” (high voltage) compared to the total time of one cycle.


Getting Started With Zephyr: Saving Data To Files

Mohammed Billoo October 31, 2023

In this blog post, I show how to implement a Zephyr application to mount a microSD card, create a new file on the microSD card, and write data to it. The lessons learned from such an application can be helpful for devices out in the field that need to write data to off-board memory periodically, especially in cases where Internet access may be sporadic.


Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Extension Fields

Mike October 29, 2023

An introduction to the pairing of points on elliptic curves. Point pairing normally requires curves over an extension field because the structure of an elliptic curve has two independent sets of points if it is large enough. The rules of pairings are described in a general way to show they can be useful for verification purposes.


Software is free and can right any wrong

Colin Walls October 26, 2023

Software changes are so much easier than hardware modifications, so the temptation is always to take this approach to fixing bugs. This may not always be a good idea.


Modern C++ in embedded development: Static Classes

Amar Mahmutbegovic October 25, 20231 comment

There is a concept of static class in C#. It is a class that contains only static members and methods, and it can’t be instantiated. In C#, a static class is declared using the static keyword. 

Static classes are used to group functions that belong to the same logical unit or software module and that may have a shared state (member variables). 

Static class in C++

The concept of a static class can be implemented in C++ as a class with all static methods and members and by deleting...


Creating a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in C

Jacob Beningo October 23, 20233 comments

In my last post, C to C++: Using Abstract Interfaces to Create Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL), I discussed how vital hardware abstraction layers are and how to use a C++ abstract interface to create them. You may be thinking, that’s great for C++, but I work in C! How do I create a HAL that can easily swap in and out different drivers? In today’s post, I will walk through exactly how to do that while using the I2C bus as an example.


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.


VHDL tutorial

Gene Breniman October 4, 20079 comments

When I was first introduced to "Programmable Logic" several years ago, it was an answer to many of the challenges that I was struggling with. Though the parts were primitive by today's standards (simple PALs verses FPGA), they were an extremely cost effective tool addressing the need for specialized logic blocks.

I have continued to incorporate these powerful blocks into many of my latest designs. My current favorite part line is the Xilinx CoolRunner series (XC2Cxxx). In this...


Analog-to-Digital Confusion: Pitfalls of Driving an ADC

Jason Sachs November 19, 20118 comments

Imagine the following scenario:You're a successful engineer (sounds nice, doesn't it!) working on a project with three or four circuit boards. More than even you can handle, so you give one of them over to your coworker Wayne to design. Wayne graduated two years ago from college. He's smart, he's a quick learner, and he's really fast at designing schematics and laying out circuit boards. It's just that sometimes he takes some shortcuts... but in this case the circuit board is just something...


Help, My Serial Data Has Been Framed: How To Handle Packets When All You Have Are Streams

Jason Sachs December 11, 201110 comments

Today we're going to talk about data framing and something called COBS, which will make your life easier the next time you use serial communications on an embedded system -- but first, here's a quiz:

Quick Diversion, Part I: Which of the following is the toughest area of electrical engineering? analog circuit design digital circuit design power electronics communications radiofrequency (RF) circuit design electromagnetic...

An overview of Linux Boot Process for Embedded Systems

Kunal Singh December 25, 200811 comments

This Text provides an insight in to the Embedded Linux Boot Process. Reader should have a basic Knowledge of Boot Process in general and should be familiar with Embedded Linux Boot Process.

.................PART-A................(1) Software components Involved in Embedded Linux Boot Process    (a) Bootloader    (b) kernel Image    (c) root file system - either an initrd image or a NFS location(2) Steps during Booting process of a conventional...

Boot sequence for an ARM based embedded system -2

DM April 6, 201213 comments

In the last post, we discussed about the startup execution sequence on an ARM based embedded system in broader terms. In this post, we are going to cover the details of a startup code.These details are also available through various ARM resources , however for the sake of completion of our discussion , here is - the flow the startup code for an  ARM based embedded system.

 Step 1: The reset

On startup, the processor will jump to fixed location ,(most ARM cores support two vector...


VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 2 - VHDL coding

Gene Breniman May 27, 2011

In part 1 of this series we focused on the hardware design, including some of the VHDL definitions of the I/O characteristics of the CPLD part.  In part 2, we will describe the VHDL logic of the CPLD for this design.

With any design, the first step to gather the requirements for the job at hand.  From part 1 of this article, I have copied two sections that address some of the requirements for the CPLD design.

The data acquisition engine has the...


Introduction to Microcontrollers - Timers

Mike Silva September 27, 20132 comments

Timers - Because "When" Matters

Computer programs are odd things, for one reason because they have no concept of time.  They may have the concept of sequential execution, but the time between instructions can be essentially any number and the program won't notice or care (unless assumptions about time have been built into the program by the programmer).  But the real world is not like this.  In the real world, especially the real embedded world,...


Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part V: State Machines

Jason Sachs January 5, 20158 comments

Other articles in this series:

Oh, hell, this article just had to be about state machines, didn’t it? State machines! Those damned little circles and arrows and q’s.

Yeah, I know you don’t like them. They bring back bad memories from University, those Mealy and Moore machines with their state transition tables, the ones you had to write up...


VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design

Gene Breniman May 22, 20086 comments

In earlier blog entries I introduced some of the basic VHDL concepts. First, developing a function ('VHDL tutorial') and later verifying and refining it ('VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench' and 'VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic'). In this entry I will describe how to...


Introduction to Microcontrollers - Further Beginnings

Mike Silva September 1, 20134 comments
Embedded Programming Basics

This tutorial entry will discuss some further embedded programming basics that you will need to understand before proceeding on to the LED blinky and other example programs. We will do this by looking at the general organization and types of instructions found in most microcontrollers, and how that organization and those instructions are reflected (or, in some cases, ignored) by the C programming language.

Basic CPU...

VERY Fast Japanese Sumo Robots

Stephane Boucher June 20, 20171 comment

For some reasons, I could not stop watching.  I would love to have the maker of one of these robots to blog about the project here on EmbeddedRelated.com, the sensors, microcontroller, algorithms and the challenges...  This would make for a very interesting read!  Do you know someone?


Going back to Germany!

Stephane Boucher June 13, 20176 comments

A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote that the decision to go to ESC Boston ended up being a great one for many different reasons.  I came back from the conference energized and really happy that I went.  

These feelings were amplified a few days after my return when I received an email from Rolf Segger, the founder of SEGGER Microcontroller (check out their very new website), asking if I would be interested in visiting their headquarters...


ESC Boston's Videos are Now Up

Stephane Boucher June 5, 2017

In my last blog, I told you about my experience at ESC Boston and the few videos that I was planning to produce and publish.  Here they are, please have a look and any feedback (positive or negative) is appreciated. 

Short Highlight

This is a very short (one minute) montage of some of the footage that I shot at the show & conference.  In future shows, I absolutely need to insert clips here and there of engineers saying a few words about the conference (why they...


Back from ESC Boston

Stephane Boucher May 6, 20172 comments

NOT going to ESC Boston would have allowed me to stay home, in my comfort zone.

NOT going to ESC Boston would have saved me from driving in the absolutely horrible & stressful Boston traffic1.

NOT going to ESC Boston would have saved me from having to go through a full search & questioning session at the Canada Customs on my return2.

2017/06/06 update: Videos are now up!

So two days...


Launch of Youtube Channel: My First Videos - Embedded World 2017

Stephane Boucher April 5, 201721 comments

I went to Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg with an ambitious plan; I would make video highlights of several exhibits (booths) to be presented to the *Related sites audience.  I would try to make the vendors focus their pitch on the essential in order to produce a one to three minutes video per booth.

So far my experience with making videos was limited to family videos, so I knew I had lots of reading to do and lots of Youtube videos and tutorials to watch.  Trade shows are...


Who else is going to Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg?

Stephane Boucher February 2, 20171 comment

These days I am particularly excited.  In a little bit less than a month and a half, I will be travelling to Nuremberg in Germany to attend Embedded World, by far the biggest Embedded Systems trade show with over 1000 vendors displaying their products and services.

I have downloaded the Duolingo app and I'm trying to do a minimum of 30 minutes per day to learn some German.  So far, I know that 'Frau' is a woman, 'Mann' is a man, 'Danke' is thank you and 'tschüss' is bye - still a...


New Comments System (please help me test it)

Stephane Boucher October 4, 201618 comments

I thought it would take me a day or two to implement, it took almost two weeks...

But here it is, the new comments systems for blogs, heavily inspired by the forum system I developed earlier this year.  

Which means that:

  • You can easily add images, either by drag and drop or through the 'Insert Image' button
  • You can add MathML, TeX and ASCIImath equations and they will be rendered with Mathjax
  • You can add code snippets and they will be highlighted with highlights.js
  • You can edit...

3 Good News

Stephane Boucher March 9, 20161 comment
Good News #1

Last week, I announced a new and ambitious reward program that will be funded by the new Vendors Directory.

This week, I am happy to announce that we have our firsts two sponsors!  Quantum Leaps & Abelon Systems have agreed to pay the sponsorship fee to be listed in the new Vendors Directory.  Because of their support, there is now some money in the reward pool ($1,000) and enough to pay for the firsts 500 'beers' awarded.  Please...


The New Forum is LIVE!

Stephane Boucher February 18, 20161 comment

After months of hard word, I am very excited to introduce to you the new forum interface.  

Here are the key features:

1- Easily add images to a post by drag & dropping the images in the editor

2- Easily attach files to a post by drag & dropping the files in the editor

3- Add latex equations to a post and they will be rendered with Mathjax (tutorial)

4- Add a code snippet and surround the code with


Helping New Bloggers to Break the Ice: A New Ipad Pro for the Author with the Best Article!

Stephane Boucher November 9, 2015

Breaking the ice can be tough. Over the years, many individuals have asked to be given access to the blogging interface only to never post an article.


The 2024 Embedded Online Conference