
Coding - Step 0: Setting Up a Development Environment
Articles in this series:
- Coding Step 0 - Development Environments
- Coding Step 1 - Hello World and Makefiles
- Coding Step 2 - Source Control
- Coding Step 3 - High-Level Requirements
- Coding Step 4 - Design
You can easily find a million articles out there discussing compiler nuances, weighing the pros and cons of various data structures or discussing the optimization of databases. Those sorts of articles are fascinating reads for advanced programmers but...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part IV: Singletons
Other articles in this series:
- Part I: Idempotence
- Part II: Immutability
- Part III: Volatility
- Part V: State Machines
- Part VI: Abstraction
Today’s topic is the singleton. This article is unique (pun intended) in that unlike the others in this series, I tried to figure out a word to use that would be a positive concept to encourage, as an alternative to singletons, but
The CRC Wild Goose Chase: PPP Does What?!?!?!
I got a bad feeling yesterday when I had to include reference information about a 16-bit CRC in a serial protocol document I was writing. And I knew it wasn’t going to end well.
The last time I looked into CRC algorithms was about five years ago. And the time before that… sometime back in 2004 or 2005? It seems like it comes up periodically, like the seventeen-year locust or sunspots or El Niño,...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part III: Volatility
1vol·a·tile adjective \ˈvä-lə-təl, especially British -ˌtī(-ə)l\ : likely to change in a very sudden or extreme way : having or showing extreme or sudden changes of emotion : likely to become dangerous or out of control
— Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Other articles in this series:
You Will Make Mistakes
</scorpion>: FAILAnyone out there see the TV pilot of Scorpion? Genius hacker squad meets Homeland Security in a fast-paced thriller to save hundreds of airplanes from crashing after LAX air traffic control software upgrade fails and they didn’t save a backup of the old version (ZOMG!!!) so thousands of people are going to die because the planes… well, they just can’t land! They just can’t. Even if the weather is sunny and calm and there could quite possibly...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Ada - 7 Segments and Catching Errors
7 Segments the Ada WayHere is the Ada version (I should say AN Ada version) of the 7 segment multiplexing code presented in the last installment. The hardware now is the STM32F407 Discover board, which is a Cortex M4F board. There are lots of differences in GPIO and timer setup, but if you understoold the previous code in C you should not have much trouble understanding this code in Ada.
As interesting as the Ada approach to the task is the Ada ability to detect...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part II: Immutability
Other articles in this series:
- Part I: Idempotence
- Part III: Volatility
- Part IV: Singletons
- Part V: State Machines
- Part VI: Abstraction
This article will discuss immutability, and some of its variations in the topic of functional programming.
There are a whole series of benefits to using program variables that… well, that aren’t actually variable, but instead are immutable. The impact of...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part I: Idempotence
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of subtle concepts that contribute to high quality software design. Many of them are well-known, and can be found in books or the Internet. I’m going to highlight a few of the ones I think are important and often overlooked.
But first let’s start with a short diversion. I’m going to make a bold statement: unless you’re a novice, there’s at least one thing in computer programming about which you’ve picked up...
Project Directory Organization
A recent question on Reddit’s C Programming sub asked what sort of directory structure people use for their projects. Perhaps not unsurprisingly this didn’t elicit a flood of answers - maybe there are no organizational schemes that people are happy with or perhaps few people consider it a glamorous topic (not that the C Programming subreddit is filled with glamorous people -no offense I love you all). Personally I find it to be a very interesting topic. Organization and process are...
OOKLONE: a cheap RF 433.92MHz OOK frame cloner
IntroductionA few weeks ago, I bought a set of cheap wireless outlets and reimplemented the protocol for further inclusion in a domotics platform. I wrote a post about it here:
//www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/620.php
Following that, I had access to another outlet from a different vendor:
http://www.castorama.fr/store/Prise-telecommandee-BLYSS---Interieur-prod4470027.html
The device documentation mentions that it operates on the same frequency as the previous...
Parlez vous Fortran?
A look at the variety of programming languages that are [or have been] used for embedded and some thoughts on the future possibilities.
Small or fast?
Developers of software for desktop computers take code optimization for granted. Embedded developers typically need to pay much more attention to the details
C++ on microcontrollers 3 – a first shot at an hc595 class with 8 output pins
This blog series is about the use of C++ for modern microcontrollers. My plan is to show the gradual development of a basic I/O library. I will introduce the object-oriented C++ features that are used step by step, to provide a gentle yet practical introduction into C++ for C programmers. Reader input is very much appreciated, you might even steer me in the direction you find most interesting.
In the first part of...
Hello Android
Finally I could get Android Early SDK up and running on my Fedora Core-7 Machine.
The process was quite simple. However I had to struggle for a few days, because Fedora install the gnu version of Java and Android requires Java from Sun.
Here are the steps I had to follow:
(1) Install the eclipse IDE (if you do not have it already) with following command:
$> yum install eclipse-jdt eclipse-jdt-sdk (to be done as super user).
(2) now install the Android SDK and ADT plug-in for Eclipse...
Deeply embedded design example - Logic replacement
I have always believed that some of the low-cost, low-pin count, low-resource microprocessors would make an excellent choice for the replacement of discrete logic components. In these cases the deeply embedded microprocessor would become less of a general purpose computer and more of a logic replacement, providing a prescribed function with no connection to the outside world. In a world of bigger, faster and more expensive, it is a pleasant change of pace...
A wireless door monitor based on the BANO framework
IntroductionI have been thinking for a while about a system to monitor the states of my flat and my garage doors from a remote place. Functionnaly, I wanted to monitor the state of my doors from a remote place. A typical situation is when I leave for holidays, but it can also be useful from the work office. To do so, I would centralize the information on a server connected on the Internet that I could query using a web browser. The server itself would be located in the appartement, where...
Android for Embedded Devices - 5 Reasons why Android is used in Embedded Devices
The embedded purists are going to hate me for this. How can you even think of using Android on an embedded system ? It’s after all a mobile phone operating system/software.
Sigh !! Yes I did not like Android to begin with, as well - for use on an Embedded System. But sometimes I think the market and needs decide what has to be used and what should not be. This is one such thing. Over the past few years, I have learned to love Android as an embedded operating system....
Video-Based STEM Embedded Systems Curriculum, Part 2
Contents:- Introduction
- Lesson Plan 1: Introducing Arduino
- Lesson Plan 2: Circuit Drawings With Fritzing
- Lesson Plan 3: Basic Electronics
- Coming Soon
This post continues from part 1. It contains the first three lesson plans.
Lesson Plan 1: Introducing ArduinoThis lesson is first because Arduino is the simplest programming environment, yet allows lots of interaction with hardware. In...
Get your microcontroller and PC to talk
(and get it done free ‘n’ easy!)
The Need
Specifications can dynamically change during the product development cycle. Bosses/clients suddenly approach us with additional requirements, which, however simple, can put us in a fix. One such requirement could be to have a PC based design interface for a standalone microcontroller project.
On many occasions, the required PC software has to just behave like a slave...
Developing software for a safety-related embedded system for the first time
I spend most of my working life with organisations that develop software for high-reliability, real-time embedded systems. Some of these systems are created in compliance with IEC 61508, ISO 26262, DO-178C or similar international standards.
When working with organisations that are developing software for their first safety-related design, I’m often asked to identify the key issues that distinguish this process from the techniques used to develop “ordinary” embedded software.
...Tenderfoot: Introduction to Magic (Numbers that is...)
Once upon a time, while participating in a source code review, I stumbled across the following C code in a header file:
struct Foo { //various structure fields char string_buffer[45+3]; //buffer requires about 45 bytes };My right eyebrow raised, I took a note, and continued with the code review, only to later stumble into this line of code in the body of a C function:
char * temp_string_buffer = (char*) malloc(45+3);Again, I took a note on this function, and continued...
A brief overview of flight control software
It has been a long time since the first drones appeared. If you are interested in such a topic, you may be confused about how and where to jump in. Since I went through the same phase, I'd like to write my findings here and help others.
For this blog post, I've created chart and table with all open source flight control programs I've been able to find.
The chart shows the course of development of the existing software. It is separated in years and you can see when which project...
In Memoriam: Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. and The Mythical Man-Month
It is with some sadness that I have read that Fred Brooks has passed away. Brooks (1931 - 2022) worked at IBM and managed a large team developing the IBM System/360 computers in the early 1960s. Brooks was thirty years old at the start of this project. He founded the Computer Science Department at UNC Chapel Hill in 1964, at the age of thirty-three, acting as its department chair for twenty years. He remained at IBM until 1965, however. During this one-year...
Getting Started With Zephyr: Devicetree Bindings
This blog post shines some light on how devicetrees are used in The Zephyr Project. Specifically, we understand the mechanisms that enable us to use nodes in the devicetree in the C source files. We use a sample provided in the Zephyr repository itself and work our way through portions of the Zephyr codebase to get insight into the mechanisms that make this possible.
Kind of Buggy! The state machine fantastic//
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to experience a lot of different kinds of coding mistakes. There were many that most programmers are familiar with, counting errors, indexing errors (the infamous 'off by one' bug), memory space sharing errors (A threading issue) as well as numerous others. I ran into one recently that I wound up using an old trick to help find.
My current project is a Pan/Tilt camera that was, upon occasion, not homing properly in one axis. The camera is a...
Is it a Bug or an Error?
Probably you’ve heard the story of how Adm. Grace Hopper attached a moth that was dislodged from a relay in the Harvard Mark II mainframe to an engineering notebook and labeled it the “First actual case of bug being found.”
Designers of electronics, including Thomas Edison, had been using the term bug for decades. But it was mostly after this amusing 1947 event hat the use of words like “bugs” and “debugging” took off in the emerging software realm.
So why is it that if a...
Favorite Tools: C++11 User-defined literals
In many software domains units of measurement are frequently critical to the software's data processing requirements. Those same units, or rather the use of the wrong units, are often the source of bugs and disastrous mistakes. Although useful for other purposes, user-defined literals are an excellent addition to the C++11 standard and handy when working with units of measurement.
Suppose a device measures velocity. To help prevent errors, the software specification requires...
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.
Understanding Yocto Project Layers: A Modular Approach to Embedded Systems Development
In the world of embedded systems, flexibility and modularity are key to managing complex projects efficiently. The Yocto Project, a powerful build system for creating custom Linux distributions, embraces this philosophy through the use of layers. These layers are essentially sets of repositories that contain the instructions and metadata required to build a specific target image. By leveraging layers, developers can modularize their projects, reusing and sharing previously developed metadata...
Introducing The VolksEEG Project
IntroductionThe VolksEEG project is an open-source project with the goal of creating an electroenchephalogram (EEG) machine, fully cleared by the FDA for standard clinical use. All designs will be freely available for others to manufacture.
The project was founded by Alan Cohen, a medical device systems engineer with an electrical engineering/software (EE/SW) background in Boston, USA, and Dr. Bryan Glezerson
