Learning Rust For Embedded Systems

Steve Branam November 12, 2021
The Motivational Portion

Based on recommendations from Kevin Nause, the VolksEEG project is considering using Rust as the embedded system programming language. So I've been off on a tear skimming books and e-books and watching videos at 2x to evaluate it.

My conclusion? Do it!

Most of the rest of us participants are primarily C/C++ embedded developers. I had previously been sensitized to Rust for embedded systems by 


The 2021 IoT Online Conference

Jacob Beningo November 9, 2021

The IoT Online Conference is back, and this time the core focus is on IoT embedded systems and edge computing. This post will explore what will be happening at this year’s conference and how teams and developers can benefit.

The IoT Online Conference Overview

The IoT Online Conference will be taking place December 8 – 10, 2021. This is the conferences’ fourth year, although it started as a fall embedded systems conference which was a single day of webinars. The...


Six Software Design Tools

Steve Branam November 5, 20211 comment
Contents: Introduction

Here are six tools to help you with software design. The first two are very simple, almost deceptively trivial, while the last four are more involved. They apply universally, to all types of software, all types of systems, and all languages. This is part of good engineering discipline.

At face value, this is just a bunch of acronyms,...


VolksEEG Project: Initial Hardware Architecture

Steve Branam November 2, 20211 comment

The initial hardware architecture for the prototype VolksEEG uses an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense, which connects to a PC via USB for UI (User Interface). Through several additional chips, this provides power to and acquires data from the ADS1299 ADC.

An important topic I mentioned in my introduction to the project is isolation, ensuring there is no conductive path for current through the patient. The architecture is therefore split into...


Introducing The VolksEEG Project

Steve Branam October 31, 2021
Introduction

The 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


Video-Based STEM Embedded Systems Curriculum, Part 2

Steve Branam October 25, 2021
Contents: Introduction

This post continues from part 1. It contains the first three lesson plans.

Lesson Plan 1: Introducing Arduino

This lesson is first because Arduino is the simplest programming environment, yet allows lots of interaction with hardware. In...


Review: Prototype to Product

Steve Branam October 16, 2021

Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market, by Alan Cohen, is a must-read for anyone involved in product development, whether in a technical, management, or executive role.

I was reminded of it by Cohen's recent episode on Embedded.fm, 388: Brains Generate EMF, which is worth listening to a couple times through, especially if you're interested in medical device development. And in fact his first episode there, 


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...


Definite Article: Notes on Traceability

Jason Sachs September 6, 2021

Electronic component distibutor Digi-Key recently announced part tracing for surface-mount components purchased in cut-tape form. This is a big deal, and it’s a feature that is a good example of traceability. Some thing or process that has traceability basically just means that it’s possible to determine an object’s history or provenance: where it came from and what has happened to it since its creation. There are a...


Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part III: Practical Issues of Inductor and Capacitor Ripple Current

Jason Sachs August 24, 20133 comments

We've been analyzing the ripple current in an H-bridge, both in an inductive load and the DC link capacitor. Here's a really quick recap; if you want to get into more details, go back and read part I and part II until you've got equations coming out of your ears. I promise there will be a lot less grungy math in this post. So let's get most of it out of the way:

Switches QAH and QAL are being turned on and off with pulse-width modulation (PWM), to produce an average voltage DaVdc on...


Development of the MOS Technology 6502: A Historical Perspective

Jason Sachs June 18, 20223 comments

One ubiquitous microprocessor of the late 1970s and 1980s was the MOS Technology MCS 6502. I included a section on the development of the 6502 in Part 2 of Supply Chain Games, and have posted it as an excerpt here, as I believe it is deserving in its own right.

(Note: MOS Technology is pronounced with the individual letters M-O-S “em oh ess”,[1] not “moss”, and should not be confused with another semiconductor company,


Android for Embedded Devices - 5 Reasons why Android is used in Embedded Devices

Maharajan Veerabahu November 6, 20173 comments

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....


Introduction to Microcontrollers - More On Interrupts

Mike Silva September 25, 2013

A Little More Detail About The Interrupt Mechanism

It's time to look a little closer at what happens in an interrupt request and response.  Again this is in general terms, and different microcontroller designs may do things somewhat differently, but the basics remain the same.  Most but not all interrupt requests are latched, which means the interrupt event sets a flag that stays set even if the interrupt event then goes away.  It is this latched flag...


Delayed printf for real-time logging

Yossi Kreinin October 25, 20133 comments

You often debug by adding a few printfs and looking at the logs. In some real-time/low-level contexts though, you don't have time for text formatting.

You don't want prints to affect timing too much, because then timing-related bugs you're chasing might disappear. And you certainly don't want the system to stop functioning altogether because prints cause it to miss real-time deadlines.

A common alternative to prints is more "raw" logging - an event buffer, where event is a union keeping...


Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part I: Ripple Current in Inductive Loads

Jason Sachs July 8, 2013

So you think you know about H-bridges? They're something I mentioned in my last post about signal processing with Python.

Here we have a typical H-bridge with an inductive load. (Mmmmm ahhh! It's good to draw by hand every once in a while!) There are four power switches: QAH and QAL connecting node A to the DC link, and QBH and QBL connecting node B to the DC link. The load is connected between nodes A and B, and here is represented by an inductive load in series with something else. We...


Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part I: Ex-Pralite Monks and Finite Fields

Jason Sachs July 3, 20176 comments

Later there will be, I hope, some people who will find it to their advantage to decipher all this mess.

— Évariste Galois, May 29, 1832

I was going to call this short series of articles “LFSRs for Dummies”, but thought better of it. What is a linear feedback shift register? If you want the short answer, the Wikipedia article is a decent introduction. But these articles are aimed at those of you who want a little bit deeper mathematical understanding,...


Lazy Properties in Python Using Descriptors

Jason Sachs November 7, 2017

This is a bit of a side tangent from my normal at-least-vaguely-embedded-related articles, but I wanted to share a moment of enlightenment I had recently about descriptors in Python. The easiest way to explain a descriptor is a way to outsource attribute lookup and modification.

Python has a bunch of “magic” methods that are hooks into various object-oriented mechanisms that let you do all sorts of ridiculously clever things. Whether or not they’re a good idea is another...


Two Capacitors Are Better Than One

Jason Sachs February 15, 20155 comments

I was looking for a good reference for some ADC-driving circuits, and ran across this diagram in Walt Jung’s Op-Amp Applications Handbook:

And I smiled to myself, because I immediately remembered a circuit I hadn’t used for years. Years! But it’s something you should file away in your bag of tricks.

Take a look at the RC-RC circuit formed by R1, R2, C1, and C2. It’s basically a stacked RC low-pass filter. The question is, why are there two capacitors?

I...