Patterns of Thinking: Metaphors in Programming
Why do some programming ideas click while others confuse engineers? This post shows that the metaphors you choose — from biological classification for inheritance to a “quantum” analogy for hierarchical state machines — shape how developers learn, design, and communicate. It also explains the surprising power of anthropomorphic (“naïve psychology”) language in team discussions and gives practical cautions about when metaphors help or mislead.
VolksEEG: Rust Development On Adafruit nRF52840 Feather Express
Setting up Rust embedded development on an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express inside a VS Code devcontainer can save time, but the toolchain has a few gotchas. This post walks through using the VolksEEG prototype echo-server to verify the USB serial path, configuring probe-rs with J-Link and OpenOCD for on-chip debugging, and diagnosing a container build error fixed by adding libudev-dev. Expect step-by-step commands and troubleshooting tips.
Learning Rust For Embedded Systems
Rust eliminates whole classes of memory and concurrency bugs, making it a compelling choice for embedded projects, and the author recommends it for the VolksEEG project after a rapid evaluation. The post connects Rust fundamentals such as ownership and borrowing, RAII, traits, and unsafe blocks to familiar embedded patterns. It also provides a curated on-ramp of videos, books, and tools like Cargo, RTIC, and probe-rs to get hands-on quickly.
Six Software Design Tools
Software design need not be mysterious, these six practical tools give a disciplined way to shape readable, testable, and maintainable code. The post walks through naming (DAMP), duplication control (DRY), complexity metrics (MCC), SOLID principles, API layering, and test-driven development, showing how each idea applies across languages and embedded systems. Use them as checklists for code reviews and design thinking.
Video-Based STEM Embedded Systems Curriculum, Part 1
This curriculum shows how to teach introductory embedded systems using free online videos and low-cost kits, suitable for middle-school, high-school, college, or adult learners. It packages curated educator recommendations, a per-student equipment and book list, essential free software, and core lesson topics like Arduino, MicroPython, Kicad board design, soldering, and RTOS basics. The approach stresses hands-on labs, safety, backups, mentorship, and adapting to local budgets.
Acceptance Tests vs. TDD
Writing the tests in a Jira ticket is not the same as doing TDD, this post explains why. It separates acceptance tests, which define business completeness and are written up-front by the customer, from TDD unit tests, which developers write incrementally as a design and feedback tool. Readable advice covers test speed, avoiding brittle tests, and how both test types fit into CI and maintainable embedded development.
Dumb Embedded System Mistakes: Running The Wrong Code
Running the wrong firmware on a board can waste hours. This post shows a practical marking strategy for embedded Linux that embeds searchable proof-of-life strings into kernel, rootfs, overlay, and application code. It walks through choosing early-boot log points, using compile-time timestamps, and a small shell script to set, find, and clear marks so you can verify builds before flashing.
Scorchers, Part 3: Bare-Metal Concurrency With Double-Buffering and the Revolving Fireplace
Jason Sachs presents a practical, low-overhead concurrency pattern for tiny bare-metal systems where an ISR (Speedy) must safely exchange data with a nonreal-time main loop (Poky). He describes the "revolving fireplace", a double-buffering variant that swaps ownership of two shared memory regions, and walks through C examples, atomic/volatile considerations, and testing strategies so you can implement it on RAM-constrained MCUs.
Simple Automated Log Processing
You don't need heavy tools to make sense of megabytes of embedded logs. This post shows a practical bash script that trims noisy serial and semihosting output, samples hourly heap-profile lines, and converts them into a CSV ready for graphing. It gives a simple, adaptable pattern you can reuse to spot memory leaks or triage recurring log signatures quickly.
UML Statechart tip: Handling errors when entering a state
Handling synchronous failures during state entry is trickier than the UML spec implies, because UML forbids transitions inside entry actions. This post compares three practical firmware patterns: explicit guarded transitions, self-posting a failure event to a LIFO queue, and converting the operation into an asynchronous service. It lays out benefits, downsides, and when each approach is appropriate for small teams, mid-sized projects, or larger firmware efforts.
Bellegram, a wireless DIY doorbell that sends you a Telegram message
A wireless button that uses the M5 STAMP PICO and Mongoose to send a Telegram message when pressed. The code is written in C
Designing Communication Protocols, Practical Aspects
When your MCU must talk to a PC or smartphone, a clear protocol saves time and headaches. This post gives practical guidance for fast bring-up: how to structure a compact header, keep payloads byte-aligned and debug-friendly, and reserve bits for future use. It also covers CRCs for integrity, timeout and retry strategies for resynchronisation, and the simple start code trick that makes debugging easier.
Round-robin or RTOS for my embedded system
Manuel Herrera walks through the practical tradeoffs between bare-metal round-robin loops and adopting an RTOS for embedded projects. He outlines two round-robin styles, explains how an RTOS gives independent threads and synchronization primitives, and highlights added code, licensing, interrupt latency, and the learning curve. Read this to sharpen decision criteria around timing guarantees, reuse, and whether an RTOS truly adds value to your firmware.
Tenderfoot: Recommended Reading
Twenty years on, these are the books that turned an electrical engineer into an embedded software pro. Matthew Eshleman walks through influential reads from Code Complete to Practical Statecharts and Test Driven Development, explaining how each shaped his design, estimation, and testing practices. This short list is a practical starting point for 'tenderfoots' launching an embedded firmware career.
Embedded Developers, Ditch Your IDEs – Here’s Why!
Ditching your Integrated Development Environment (IDE) temporarily can be a transformative learning experience in embedded development. This post invites you to explore the underpinnings of IDEs by delving into alternative tools and processes like Makefile, CMake, Vim, GDB, and OpenOCD. Understanding these tools can demystify the background operations of IDEs, revealing the intricacies of compiling, linking, and debugging. This journey into the “under the hood” aspects of development is not just about learning new tools, but also about gaining a deeper appreciation for the convenience and efficiency that IDEs provide. By stepping out of your comfort zone and experimenting with these alternatives, you can sharpen your skills, enhance your knowledge, and possibly discover a more tailored and streamlined development experience. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned developer, this exploration promises insights and revelations that can elevate your embedded development journey.
Embedded Toolbox: Programmer's Calculator
A tiny but powerful cross-platform tool, QCalc evaluates full C-syntax expressions so you can paste results straight into firmware. It handles bitwise ops, mixed hex/decimal/binary constants, and scientific math, and it automatically shows integer results in formatted hex and binary. The post explains key features, variable handling, error messages, and how to run qcalc.tcl with the wish Tk interpreter.
Embedded Toolbox: Windows GUI Prototyping Toolkit
You can prototype and debug complex embedded device user interfaces on Windows using the tiny, free QWin toolkit. It runs the same C code you compile for the target by implementing a Windows BSP, letting you develop UI code quickly with MinGW or Visual C++ and a visual resource editor. The result is far faster compile-run-debug cycles and a simpler path around flaky prototype hardware.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 2
A look back at a deep dive into the Mars Perseverance flight software from one of the technical leads at JPL.
Zephyr: West Manifest For Application Development
In this blog post, I show a simpler way to create custom West manifest files. This technique eliminates the need to duplicate the complex West manifest from upstream Zephyr. I also show how we can use the West manifest to include out-of-tree board and SoC definitions, and include our own out-of-tree drivers.
I Stopped Testing Embedded Systems by Hand. Here's What Replaced It.
Everardo Garcia walks through the shift from manual, terminal-based system-level testing to automated tests that run during development. He shows how OpenHTF (a framework originally built at Google for manufacturing lines) plus a laptop, a USB cable, and ~150 lines of Python closes the functional testing gap most embedded teams carry, and how spec-driven prompting with GitHub Copilot makes writing plugs and phases fast enough to keep up.
Continuous Integration for Embedded Systems
Hardware dependencies make continuous integration for embedded systems harder than for pure software, yet it is essential for quality and faster feedback. This post explains the three CI types, host, non-host and hardware-in-the-loop, then compares trade-offs in cost, parallelism, timing accuracy and portability. It also outlines steps in a typical CI pipeline and highlights practical tools and plugins, including Jenkins and static analysis to automate builds and tests.
C++ on microcontrollers 4 – input pins, and decoding a rotary switch
Wouter van Ooijen shows how to extend a small C++ I/O library for microcontrollers to support input pins and mixed I/O, and how to decode a rotary switch reliably. The post walks through a safe class hierarchy for input, output, and bidirectional pins, then builds a quadrature decoder with a saturating counter and an HC595 seven-segment demo you can run on LPCXpresso hardware.
Ada 2012 for ARM M3/M4 Released for Download
AdaCore's initial Ada 2012 port for ARM Cortex M3/M4 is now downloadable, and Mike Silva walks it through a hands-on demo on an STM32F4 Discovery board. He shows an Ada-written LCD driver, LED multitasking, and how Ada language features like Ada.Realtime, array slices, and unchecked conversions make low-level GPIO and timing code clearer and safer. The post highlights atomic BSRR GPIO writes and Ravenscar runtime details.
Patterns of Thinking: Metaphors in Programming
Why do some programming ideas click while others confuse engineers? This post shows that the metaphors you choose — from biological classification for inheritance to a “quantum” analogy for hierarchical state machines — shape how developers learn, design, and communicate. It also explains the surprising power of anthropomorphic (“naïve psychology”) language in team discussions and gives practical cautions about when metaphors help or mislead.
C++ Assertion? Well Yes, But Actually No.
Assertions are a double-edged sword - on one side you enforce program correctness catching bugs close to their origin, on the other your application is subject to run-time error, like any interpreted language. This article explores what C++ can offer to get the advantages of assertions, without risking the crashes by moving contract checking at compile time.
Getting Started With Zephyr: Kconfig
In this blog post, we briefly look at Kconfig, one of the core pieces of the Zephyr infrastructure. Kconfig allows embedded software developers to turn specific subsystems on or off within Zephyr efficiently and control their behavior. We also learn how we can practically use Kconfig to control the features of our application using the two most common mechanisms.
The volatile keyword
Although the C keyword volatile is very useful in embedded applications, care is needed to use it correctly and vigilance is required to ensure its correct implementation by compilers.
You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 3)
In this third article I'll share with you a few cooperative schedulers (with a mix of both free and commercial licenses) that implement a few of the OS primitives that the "Superduperloop" is currently missing, possibly giving you a ready-to-go solution for your system. On the other hand, I don't think it's all that hard to add thread flags, binary and counting semaphores, event flags, mailboxes/queues, a simple Observer pattern, and something I call a "marquee" to the "Superduperloop"; I'll show you how to do that in the second half of this article and the next. Although it will take a little more work than just using one of the projects above, it will give you the maximum amount of control over your system and it will let you write tasks in ways you could only dream of using an RTOS or other off-the-shelf system.
Modern Embedded Systems Programming: Beyond the RTOS
Blocking-based RTOS tasks make embedded systems brittle and hard to extend, this post argues, and presents a practical alternative: active objects organized as message pumps. It explains why one-blocking-call tasks and nonblocking event handlers improve responsiveness and reduce task proliferation, and recommends using frameworks plus hierarchical state machines and UML to enforce good architecture and make designs scalable.
Cutting Through the Confusion with ARM Cortex-M Interrupt Priorities
ARM Cortex-M interrupt priorities are famously confusing because numeric priority values are inverted relative to urgency and several different conventions coexist. This post cuts through the mess by explaining NVIC register bit placement, the CMSIS NVIC_SetPriority convention, preempt versus subpriority grouping, and when to use PRIMASK or BASEPRI. Read on for practical rules to avoid subtle priority bugs in real-time firmware.
