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The 2025 Embedded Online Conference

Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 1

Tim Guite March 5, 2025

Discussion of a "hidden gem" from the Embedded Online Conference archives!


Optimizing Hardware Design: Reducing Iterations with DSM

Emmanuel Odunlade March 3, 2025

Often, product teams curate feature roadmaps that fail to account for the interdependencies in product components. For this article, I wrote about how system architecture tools like Design(dependency) Structure matrix (DSM) can be used to evaluate feature roadmaps to avoid the purgatory of change propagation and accompanying endless Iteration loops. These iteration loops are sometimes affordable (manageable) in software development (Agile saves lives), but for hardware teams - especially small product teams and startups - the lost time, and money is the stuff of which product graves are made.


3 Tips for Developing Embedded Systems with AI

Jacob Beningo March 1, 2025

Explore how to leverage AI in developing embedded systems with three practical tips, learn why documenting your workflows, supercharging testing and debugging, and adopting AI-assisted code generation can save time, reduce errors, and boost performance in your projects, and discover actionable insights to streamline development in resource-constrained environments, this blog explains how to prepare for AI integration while keeping the expertise of experienced engineers intact, offering real-world examples that show how even incremental AI adoption can revolutionize your development process, whether you’re new to AI or seeking to enhance existing practices, these strategies provide a clear roadmap to build smarter, more efficient embedded systems using AI.


Static or static

Colin Walls February 24, 2025

The keyword static in C and C++ has multiple uses, which are not always well understood.


The Most Annoying Sound

Ido Gendel February 17, 2025

Independent consultants often face requests and requirements that go beyond the technicalities of software and hardware. Designing user interfaces is a common example, and even though most of us are not UI experts, we still have to get it right, otherwise the users may get annoyed, and the product will fail. However, what happens when we're asked explicitly to annoy users? Here's a true story about such a case.


Sheep Bridge: In Praise of Generalists and System Engineers

Jason Sachs February 11, 2025

Today I want to talk about generalists and system engineers: why they’re important and why they’re different from each other.

Specialists and Generalists

A specialist is someone who has a very deep understanding of a particular subject, and spends much of the time working on aspects of that subject. Few others are capable of doing the specialist’s work. I recently wrote an article on gate drive design (Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge,...


OS influence on power consumption

Colin Walls January 27, 20251 comment

Power consumption of an embedded system may be influenced in software in general, but selection of an operating system can be key.


The Teardown Conference Call for Proposals is Open for Another Week!

Nathan Jones January 6, 2025

The Teardown conference "Call for Proposals" goes until Wednesday, January 15th! Get yours in soon!


Scorchers, Part 4: Burned by the Happy Path (Simon Says)

Jason Sachs December 31, 2024

As engineers, we have to think carefully about how our designs may be used in ways we did not foresee. You may have heard of the happy path, which describes a sequence of events someone takes to use a product — whether it’s software or hardware. The line between software and hardware has gotten pretty blurry in recent years due to the prevalence of embedded systems. (Good news for embedded engineers!) Things have gotten


Using a board with NuttX RTOS as an RS-485 / Modbus Slave Device

Alan C Assis December 22, 2024

Until now we saw how to connect local sensors, actuators and also some kinds of analog devices in our board, but for Industrial application it is very common to use remote devices over some bus, and RS-485 and Modbus (a protocol over physical layer of RS-485) is very common and low cost bus for this kind of application.

And a good thing about RS-485 on NuttX is because you just need an ordinary UART peripheral and a GPIO pin connected to some RS485 transceiver to use it. It means even if...


Adventures in Signal Processing with Python

Jason Sachs June 23, 201311 comments

Author’s note: This article was originally called Adventures in Signal Processing with Python (MATLAB? We don’t need no stinkin' MATLAB!) — the allusion to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre has been removed, in deference to being a good neighbor to The MathWorks. While I don’t make it a secret of my dislike of many aspects of MATLAB — which I mention later in this article — I do hope they can improve their software and reduce the price. Please note this...


MSP430 Launchpad Tutorial - Part 1 - Basics

Enrico Garante June 14, 201320 comments

TI's LaunchPad is a complete MSP430 development environment: all you have to do is download and install CCS IDE (login required), connect your G2231-ready LaunchPad to your computer with the included mini-usb cable, and you are ready to code!

Texas Instrument MSP430 LaunchPad

So, let's see how to start a new project in Code Composer Studio. This IDE is derived from Eclipse, so if you used it before you shouldn't have much problems.

We'll write a simple program that will...


Ten Little Algorithms, Part 2: The Single-Pole Low-Pass Filter

Jason Sachs April 27, 201516 comments

Other articles in this series:

I’m writing this article in a room with a bunch of other people talking, and while sometimes I wish they would just SHUT UP, it would be...


Thermistor signal conditioning: Dos and Don'ts, Tips and Tricks

Jason Sachs June 15, 201116 comments

In an earlier blog entry,  I mentioned this circuit for thermistor signal conditioning:

It is worth a little more explanation on thermistor signal conditioning; it's something that's often done poorly, whereas it's among the easiest applications for signal conditioning.

The basic premise here is that there are two resistors in a voltage divider: Rth is the thermistor, and Rref is a reference resistor. Here Rref is either R3 alone, or R3 || R4, depending on the gain...


My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow: Arthur S., Arthur T., and the Soup Nazi

Jason Sachs February 15, 201551 comments

Warning: In the interest of maintaining a coherent stream of consciousness, I’m lowering the setting on my profanity filter for this post. Just wanted to let you know ahead of time.

I’ve been a user of Stack Overflow since December of 2008. And I say “user” both in the software sense, and in the drug-addict sense. I’m Jason S, user #44330, and I’m a programming addict. (Hi, Jason S.) The Gravatar, in case you were wondering, is a screen...


VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench

Gene Breniman October 30, 20073 comments

In an earlier article I walked through the VHDL coding of a simple design. In this article I will continue the process and create a test bench module to test the earlier design. The Xilinx ISE environment makes it pretty easy to start the testing process. To start the process, select "New Source" from the menu items under "Project". This launches the "New Source Wizard". From within the Wizard select "VHDL Test Bench" and enter the name of the new module (click 'Next' to...


Zebras Hate You For No Reason: Why Amdahl's Law is Misleading in a World of Cats (And Maybe in Ours Too)

Jason Sachs February 27, 20171 comment

I’ve been wasting far too much of my free time lately on this stupid addicting game called the Kittens Game. It starts so innocently. You are a kitten in a catnip forest. Gather catnip.

And you click on Gather catnip and off you go. Soon you’re hunting unicorns and building Huts and studying Mathematics and Theology and so on. AND IT’S JUST A TEXT GAME! HTML and Javascript, that’s it, no pictures. It’s an example of an


Using the Beaglebone PRU to achieve realtime at low cost

Fabien Le Mentec April 25, 20148 comments
Introduction

I work as an engineer in a synchrotron facility. A few weeks ago, I helped the people in charge of the power supply developments to integrate a realtime control algorithm on a prototype platform: a BeagleBone Black (BBB) running Linux. I had already worked with this board in the past, and I found it very interesting given its excellent resources versus price ratio (around 40 euros). This time, I was impressed by its realtime capabilities. I thought it would be a good idea to...


Coroutines in one page of C

Yossi Kreinin August 20, 201315 comments

A coroutine is a function that you can jump back into after returning from it - and it remembers where it was in the code, and all the variables. This is very useful at times.

One use is generating a sequence of values. Here's how you can generate all the x,y pairs in a 2D range in Python:

def iterate(max_x, max_y): for x in range(max_x): for y in range(max_y): yield x,y for x,y in iterate(2,2): print x,y

This prints:

0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1

The yield keyword is like...


New Promo Video for the 2022 Embedded Online Conference

Stephane Boucher April 19, 2022

Less than a week to go before the conference! Check out our 2022 Embedded Online Conference promo video, featuring (in order of appearance) Helen Leigh, Peter McLaughlin, Jack Ganssle, Tyler Hoffman, Steve Branam, Colin O'Flynn, Miro Samek, Henk Muller, Jacob Beningo, Harrison Donahue, Kate Stewart, Clive (Max) Maxfield, Don Wilcher, Adam Taylor, and Jean Labrosse.

If you haven't registered for the conference yet, please consider doing so today.  Make sure to use the...


2022 Embedded Online Conference - Final Push!

Stephane Boucher April 8, 2022

With the Embedded Online Conference only a couple of weeks away, we are now doing a final push to ensure that as many engineers as possible who could benefit from the conference are aware of it. 

If you'd like to help us spread the word, not only will you make our day, but you'll also earn a chance to win one of TWO Saleae Logic Pro 8.     

Prize: TWO Saleae Logic Pro 8Raffle...

The 2021 DSP/ML Online Conference

Stephane Boucher September 29, 2021

The 2021 DSP/ML Online Conference is just around the corner and this year again, the program is packed with opportunities to learn. 

By registering for the conference, not only will you have full access to all talks, workshops, and Q&A sessions at this year's event, but you'll also gain instant access to all talks from last year's edition.  

We've asked the speakers to tell me a few words about their sessions, here are some of the answers we've...


Embedded Online Conference 2021 - Watch the Speakers Share their Thoughts on the Value for Attendees

Stephane Boucher May 4, 20212 comments

Over the last few weeks, we've had a chance to chat with some of the speakers at the upcoming Embedded Online Conference.  We asked them to share their thoughts on conferences and the Embedded Online Conference in particular.  Here are their answers edited together in one video:

  

If you are not registered yet for the conference but are considering it, please make sure to use the promo code ER149 to save more than 40% on your registration...


8 Weeks - 8 Giveaways!

Stephane Boucher March 10, 2021

If for some reason, you've been putting off registering for the upcoming 2021 Embedded Online Conference, here are 8 good reasons to register today.

The idea is simple; if you are registered for the conference by the 'raffle date' for any of the following giveaways, you'll automatically be entered into the draw.

So for instance, if you are already registered for the conference or register before March the 22nd, you'll be automatically entered into the 8 draws...


Announcing the 2021 Embedded Online Conference!

Stephane Boucher January 27, 20211 comment

Once again this year, Jacob Beningo and I are putting together the Embedded Online ConferenceLast year's edition was a very rewarding experience, with over 6,000 registrants, fantastic & insightful talks, and lots of positive feedback.  For this year's edition, we are delighted to announce that none other than Jack Ganssle will be giving a Keynote presentation about the 50th anniversary of the Microprocessor.

The 2021 Embedded Online Conference will...


The DSP Online Conference - Right Around the Corner!

Stephane Boucher September 20, 2020

It is Sunday night as I write this blog post with a few days to go before the virtual doors of the very first DSP Online Conference open..

It all started with a post in the DSPRelated forum about three months ago.  We had just had a blast running the 2020 Embedded Online Conference and we thought it could be fun to organize a smaller event dedicated to the DSP community.  So my goal with the post in the forum was to see if...


Already 3000+ Attendees Registered for the Upcoming Embedded Online Conference

Stephane Boucher February 14, 2020

Chances are you already know, through the newsletter or banners on the Related sites, about the upcoming Embedded Online Conference.

Chances are you also already know that you have until the end of the month of February to register for free. 

And chances are that you are one of the more than 3000 pro-active engineers who have already registered.

But If you are like me and have a tendency to do tomorrow what can be done today, maybe you haven't registered yet.  You may...


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...


Free Goodies from Embedded World - What to Do Next?

Stephane Boucher March 6, 20193 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.


The 2025 Embedded Online Conference