C to C++: 3 Reasons to Migrate
Embedded C still powers most devices, but rising system complexity is revealing its limits. In this post Jacob Beningo kicks off a series on moving from C to C++, offering three practical reasons to start the migration now. He argues for an incremental approach that keeps low-level, hardware-dependent code in C while adopting C++ for higher-level, object-oriented application logic so teams can keep shipping during the transition.
Soft Skills For Embedded Systems Software Developers
Soft skills often determine whether an embedded project ships on time as much as technical chops do. This post lays out practical, engineer-friendly guidance on interpersonal skills, communication, time management, deep focus, asking for help, learning, and resilience. It mixes concrete tips like the documentation system, pomodoro and quiet hours with habits such as engineering notebooks and role-playing to make collaboration and productivity more reliable.
Favorite Software AND Hardware Tools for Embedded Systems Development
Tool choice can make or break an embedded project, and Stephane Boucher gathered developers' favorite hardware and software picks from the Embedded Online Conference into one handy roundup. The post points to a companion video and lists concrete tools from oscilloscopes and logic analyzers to J-Link probes, Python, unit-test frameworks, and soldering irons. It is a quick, practical peek at what experienced embedded engineers actually use.
Getting Started With Embedded Linux - From Nothing To A Login Prompt
This hands-on guide shows how to go from a blank board to a bootable embedded Linux system using Yocto and Docker. Follow the steps to build a reproducible Yocto environment, fetch Toradex manifests, set MACHINE to verdin-imx8mm, run bitbake, and produce the .wic.bmap image ready to flash. Ideal for engineers wanting a concise bringup path for a Verdin iMX8M Mini on a Dahlia carrier.
A New Related Site!
The post announces the launch of MLRelated, a new Related site dedicated to machine learning and deep learning. It positions MLRelated as complementary to existing Related sites by highlighting cross-cutting interests: TinyML for embedded developers, machine/deep learning applications in signal processing, and FPGA-based AI/ML implementations. The new site debuts with a modest amount of content and is expected to expand rapidly through contributions from the Related community in the form of blogs, forum threads, and webinars. The author invites readers to report navigation errors, share feedback, and propose ideas to help steer MLRelated into a practical, community-driven resource for researchers and practitioners in ML and adjacent domains.
Skills For Embedded Systems Software Developers
Embedded development demands a broad, practical skillset, and this post lays out the core knowledge employers expect across software, hardware, and tooling. It highlights essential languages like C, low-level concepts such as interrupts and RTOS, plus hardware skills like debugging with JTAG and using oscilloscopes. You also get realistic timelines, hands on study advice, and resource pointers to build a portfolio that proves you can ship reliable firmware.
Five ‘80s Movies that Inspired Me to Become an Engineer
Jacob Beningo revisits five 1980s films that helped spark his interest in electronics and engineering. From Short Circuit's exposed control ports to Data's DIY gadgets in The Goonies, these movies show hardware, invention, and imagination in action. The post ties on-screen robot tricks, backyard-built spaceships, and retro dashboards to modern themes like IoT, CubeSats, and autonomous systems, making a case for learning through storytelling.
3 Overlooked Embedded Software Elements
Jacob Beningo points out three often-overlooked elements that can make embedded projects less painful and faster to ship. He highlights model-generated code for off-target iteration, configuration-generated code to manage SKUs and avoid fragile conditional compilation, and automated test harnesses to catch regressions early. The post gives practical reasons to consider each approach and how they fit into modern embedded DevOps.
Learning A New Microcontroller
Learning a new microcontroller becomes manageable with a repeatable, stepwise process that focuses on common peripherals, tools, and example programs. This post lays out hands-on exercises from blinky and UART echoes through I2C/SPI, PWM and ADC to DMA and RTOS variations, and shows how to evolve prototype code into reusable HAL and OSAL layers. Practical tips cover hardware setup, logic analyzers, and keeping an engineering notebook.
Development of the MOS Technology 6502: A Historical Perspective
A tiny team at MOS Technology pulled off one of the most influential microprocessor wins of the 1970s, creating the 6502 by marrying clever circuit choices with pragmatic manufacturing techniques. This excerpt by Jason Sachs focuses on the NMOS depletion-load process, mask and layout workflows, and yield-improving tricks like Micralign projection lithography and spot-knocking, showing how engineering and process decisions made a low-cost CPU ubiquitous.
Energia - program a TI MSP430 using Arduino sketches
Energia brings Arduino simplicity to TI's MSP430, turning a fiddly toolchain into a sketch-based workflow you already know. Lonnie Honeycutt walks through why the Launchpad is a great low-cost dev option, outlines supported MSP430 families and caveats like 3.3 volt I/O, and shows a Halloween LED jack-o-lantern sketch to prove how quickly you can get blinking LEDs.
Metal detection: beat frequency oscillator
Fabien Le Mentec walks through a practical beat frequency oscillator metal detector, from the LC oscillator theory to the Arduino-based frequency counter. He shows how changes in coil inductance reveal nearby metal, and why capacitor choice matters when you want a stable detector. The post focuses on the BFO sensing stage, with enough detail to help you build and test one yourself.
The CRC Wild Goose Chase: PPP Does What?!?!?!
Jason Sachs walks through a CRC rabbit hole and explains why ambiguous CRC names and incomplete specs lead to subtle protocol bugs. He demonstrates how XMODEM and KERMIT variants with a zero initial value can miss dropped leading-zero bytes, praises the X.25 standard for providing test vectors and a clear CRC16 definition, and warns that RFCs that ship only sample code are a poor substitute for a proper specification.
Use Microprogramming to Save Resources and Increase Functionality
Microprogramming can rescue an overfull FPGA, Michael Morris shows, by compressing control logic and time-multiplexing FIFO storage. He replaces an ABEL state machine with a small microprogram ROM that uses block RAM for deep Rx/Tx FIFOs and LUT RAM for pointers and counters, freeing about 25 percent of the device. The article includes Verilog comparisons, resource tables, and a microassembler link to reproduce the approach.
What to See at Embedded World 2019
Skip the overwhelm at Embedded World 2019, Stephane Boucher lays out a practical preview of what to see and how to prioritize your time. The post helps embedded engineers focus on demos, vendor booths, and sessions that matter without getting lost on the show floor. Read it to plan a short, efficient visit that maximizes technical takeaways and networking opportunities.
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.
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.
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.
Embedded World 2018 - More Videos!
Two cinematic videos from Embedded World 2018 turn the show floor into slow-motion, stabilized footage using a Zhiyun Crane gimbal and a Sony a6300. One is a SEGGER booth highlights piece featuring Rolf Segger and Axel Wolf, the other is a roaming montage with appearances from Jacob Beningo, Micheal Barr, and Alan Hawse. Stephane asks viewers to enable audio and share feedback.
Absolute Beginner's Guide To Getting Started With Raspberry Pi
Getting started with Raspberry Pi can feel overwhelming. This guide strips the noise and shows the simplest path from unboxing to a working desktop. It recommends buying a preloaded NOOBS microSD to avoid imaging hassles, lists exact parts and suppliers, and walks through booting, recovery, and making a backup. If you want embedded electronics it also lists starter parts and ESD safety tips.
Libgpiod - Toggling GPIOs The Right Way In Embedded Linux
Accessing GPIOs through sysfs is simple but fragile, causing race conditions when multiple userspace processes touch the same line. This post explains libgpiod, introduced in Linux 4.8, and shows concise Python examples on a Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus for requesting lines, tagging the consumer, using active_low flags, and reading or driving values. Learn why libgpiod provides safer, atomic GPIO handling.
Sensors Expo - Trip Report & My Best Video Yet!
Stephane Boucher turns a first-time Sensors Expo visit into a fun travelogue and a polished conference highlights video. He mixes candid trip anecdotes from Moncton to San Jose, electric-scooter discoveries, Santa Cruz detours, Airbnb tips, and on-the-floor expo footage. The post culminates in what he calls his best highlights reel yet, plus a follow-up video focused on embedded and IoT.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XIV: Gold Codes
Gold codes solve a practical spread-spectrum problem, sharing one PRBS across many transmitters eventually runs into ugly synchronization and correlation issues. Jason Sachs walks through why shifted copies of a single LFSR sequence are not enough, then shows how preferred pairs of m-sequences create a family of Gold codes with bounded cross-correlation. The post wraps with Python experiments and a UART DSSS demo that decodes multiple overlapping messages cleanly.
Jaywalking Around the Compiler
Messing with inline assembly can feel powerful until the compiler silently undoes you. Jason Sachs walks through a real bug on a Microchip dsPIC33E where pushing CORCON and writing a fixed value corrupts compiler-managed state and produces wrong results when the compiler reorders code. The post shows why the stack and certain registers are off-limits to raw inline asm, and gives practical, safe patterns to save and restore mode bits.
Favorite Tools: C++11 std::array
Firmware teams that avoid malloc or new need safer alternatives, and this post makes a strong case for C++11 std::array as that alternative. It highlights zero-overhead, type-safe, compile-time buffers and points to an ESP32 LED-strip demo where NUM_PIXELS_ fixes RAM usage at build time. Read it to see std::array used with std::rotate, passed to C libraries via data(), and as a low-risk path to std::vector later.
How to Achieve Deterministic Behavior in Real-Time Embedded Systems
Ensuring deterministic behavior in real-time embedded systems is paramount for their reliability and performance. The ability to predict precisely how a system will respond to various inputs at any given time is crucial in critical applications such as medical devices, aerospace systems, and automotive safety mechanisms. Achieving deterministic behavior involves meticulous design, stringent testing, and adherence to strict timing constraints.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XV: Error Detection and Correction
CRCs and Hamming codes look a lot less magical when you view them as redundancy with a purpose. Jason Sachs walks from parity bits and checksums into finite-field polynomial arithmetic, then shows how CRCs map cleanly onto LFSRs and how Hamming codes use syndromes to locate single-bit errors. It is a practical tour of error detection and correction, with enough worked examples to make the theory feel usable.
Oscilloscope review: Hameg HMO2024
Jason Sachs tests the Hameg HMO2024, a 200MHz 4-channel mixed-signal oscilloscope that promises Agilent-like features at a lower price. He finds strong analog noise performance, useful hi-res and zoom modes, and inexpensive serial-decode options, but warns of clumsy digital-input handling, awkward data-transfer software, and missing per-channel thresholds and Ethernet waveform export. The review helps budget-conscious embedded engineers weigh the trade-offs.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part VI: Sing Along with the Berlekamp-Massey Algorithm
Jason Sachs breaks down the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm and shows how to recover an LFSR's minimal connection polynomial from a stream of output bits. The article mixes intuition, worked examples, and Python code to demonstrate the update rule, visual debugging tables, and when the solution is unique. Expect practical implementation notes, a complexity discussion, and a libgf2 example you can run in an IPython notebook.
How to make a heap profiler
A heap profiler is surprisingly simple to build, and Yossi Kreinin walks through a compact working example called heapprof. The post shows how to intercept malloc/free, stash per-allocation metadata and call stacks into heap chunks, dump memory on crash or via JTAG, and map return addresses to source lines with addr2line or gdb. It also covers practical bootstrapping tricks for platforms without standard libc support.
