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The 2024 Embedded Online Conference

A brief overview of flight control software

Igor Mišić May 3, 20193 comments

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...


Debugging DSP code.

Mark Browne May 1, 2019

I am fascinated with neural network processing and have been playing with them since the 80's.

I am a frequent contributor to the Numenta forum. Numenta is the current project of Jeff Hawins, the guy that gave us the Palm Pilot. They are working with the HTM model. This is a system based on studies of the functions of the cortical column and has some very interesting properties: It processes sequential data streams and has very effective one shot learning. The data is arranged in Sparse...


Mutex vs. Semaphore - Part 1

Niall Cooling April 12, 20195 comments

It never ceases to amaze me how often I see postings in forums asking the difference between a semaphore and a mutex. Probably what baffles me more is that over 90% of the time the responses given are either incorrect or missing the key differences. The most often quoted response is that of the “The Toilet Example (c) Copyright 2005, Niclas Winquist” . This summarises the differences as:

  • A mutex is really a semaphore with value 1

No, no, and no again....


Patents and the little guy working at home

Mark Browne April 11, 20191 comment
There are pluses and minuses to having patents. As it stands now the patent system is horribly broken and not doing what the founders intended when they set it up.I have some patents through work and it does look nice to see my name on the patent database. It's kinda like wetting yourself in a dark suit - it gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices.Don Lancaster makes a compelling argument that for the little guy it’s best to avoid the whole mess to the degree possible.

Public speaking

Mark Browne April 3, 20192 comments

Public Speaking: This common task goes with embedded system engineering. Pitching a project. Presenting at a conference. Delivering a status report. Teaching. All part of the job.

Stephane Boucher did a v-blog post here last week and is naturally apprehensive about how he did.

If you have not seen it you can catch it here:

First - Stephane - You did fine!

I spent some time (5 quarters, 3 classes a day, computer technology in a tech school) in a classroom and am comfortable in front of a...


Getting smacked by the long tail of poor design habits

Mark Browne March 25, 2019

In the 80’s I did a fair amount of consulting and enjoyed it greatly.

I would come in, hear what it was the person hiring me wanted; meet with the people that I needed to work with and proceed to toss together a design, parts list, and program. Sometimes I would work with them to get a board into production. I knew my chips and code and could make all kinds of amazing toys.

One of my biggest repeat customers eventually offered a good salary at the same time that my wife was feeling...


Free Goodies from Embedded World - Full Inventory and Upcoming Draw Live-Streaming Date

Stephane Boucher March 22, 20191 comment

Chances are that you already know that I went to Embedded World a few weeks ago and came back with a bag full of "goodies".  Initially, my vision was to do a single draw for one person to win it all, but I didn't expect to come back with so much stuff and so many development kits.   Based on your feedback, it seems like you guys agree that It wouldn't make sense for one person to win everything as no-one could make good use of all the boards and there would be lots of...


AI at the Edge - Can I run a neural network in a resource-constrained device?

Stephen Martin March 11, 20192 comments

Hello Related Communities,

This is my first time blogging since joining Stephane in November. He and I were at Embedded World together and he asked me to write about some of the important trends as they relate to all of you. I expect to post others in the near future, but the biggest trend in the embedded space was all of the activity around artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge. 

This trend caught me a bit by surprise. I have been doing a lot of reading about AI over the last...


Free Goodies from Embedded World - What to Do Next?

Stephane Boucher March 6, 20194 comments

I told you I would go on a hunt for free stuff at Embedded World in order to build a bundle for someone to win.


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...

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,


Mutex vs. Semaphore - Part 1

Niall Cooling April 12, 20195 comments

It never ceases to amaze me how often I see postings in forums asking the difference between a semaphore and a mutex. Probably what baffles me more is that over 90% of the time the responses given are either incorrect or missing the key differences. The most often quoted response is that of the “The Toilet Example (c) Copyright 2005, Niclas Winquist” . This summarises the differences as:

  • A mutex is really a semaphore with value 1

No, no, and no again....


Oscilloscope review: Hameg HMO2024

Jason Sachs March 28, 20133 comments

Last year I wrote about some of the key characteristics of oscilloscopes that are important to me for working with embedded microcontrollers. In that blog entry I rated the Agilent MSOX3024A 4-channel 16-digital-input oscilloscope highly.

Since then I have moved to a different career, and I am again on the lookout for an oscilloscope. I still consider the Agilent MSOX3024A the best choice for a...


Dealing With Fixed Point Fractions

Mike January 5, 20163 comments

Fixed point fractional representation always gives me a headache because I screw it up the first time I try to implement an algorithm. The difference between integer operations and fractional operations is in the overflow.  If the representation fits in the fixed point result, you can not tell the difference between fixed point integer and fixed point fractions.  When integers overflow, they lose data off the most significant bits.  When fractions overflow, they lose data off...


Ada 2012 Comes to ARM Cortex M3/M4

Mike Silva April 25, 20148 comments
Ada, that old dinosaur?  I thought Ada was dead!

Admit it, at least a few of you had that thought, right?  Well, far from being dead, the Ada language has been evolving, improving, and helping to save lives, property and money around the world for the past 30 years.  And what's more, the latest version of the language, Ada 2012, will soon be coming to a two-dollar microcontroller near you.

A Personal Dream Come True

OK, maybe that's going too far -...


Have You Ever Seen an Ideal Op-Amp?

Jason Sachs April 30, 2012

Somewhere, along with unicorns and the Loch Ness Monster, lies a small colony of ideal op-amps. Op-amp is short for operational amplifier, and we start our education on them by learning about these mythical beasts, which have the following properties:

  • Infinite gain
  • Infinite input impedance
  • Zero output impedance

And on top of it all, they will do whatever it takes to change their output in order to make their two inputs equal.

But they don't exist. Real op-amps have...


Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Mike November 16, 20156 comments

Secure online communications require encryption. One standard is AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) from NIST. But for this to work, both sides need the same key for encryption and decryption. This is called Private Key encryption.


Went 280km/h (174mph) in a Porsche Panamera in Germany!

Stephane Boucher July 10, 201712 comments

Those of you who've been following my blog lately already know that I am going through some sort of mid-life crisis that involves going out there to meet people and make videos.  It all started with Embedded World early this year, then continued at ESC Boston a couple of months ago and the latest chapter just concluded as I returned from Germany after spending a week at SEGGER's headquarters to produce a video to highlight their 25th anniversary.  


Reverse engineering wireless wall outlets

Fabien Le Mentec July 19, 2014
Introduction

I am improving the domotics framework that I described in a previous article://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/605.php

I want to support wireless wall outlets, allowing me to switch devices power from a remote location over HTTP.

To do so, I could design my own wireless wall outlets and use a hardware similar to the previous one, based on the NRF905 chipset. The problem is that such a product would not be certified, and that would be an issue regarding the home insurance,...


The 2024 Embedded Online Conference