Favorite Tools: C++11 std::array
Many embedded software and firmware projects must be developed to high standards of reliability. To meet these reliability requirements, firmware project teams will consider many design tradeoffs. For example, an engineering team may avoid...
The Other Kind of Bypass Capacitor
●1 commentThere’s a type of bypass capacitor I’d like to talk about today. It’s not the usual power supply bypass capacitor, aka decoupling capacitor, which is used to provide local charge storage to an integrated circuit, so that the...
It ain't heavy, it's my robot...
Unmanned Ground Vehicles - Design considerations for man-portable/packable vehiclesA UGV is “a ground based mechanical device that can sense and interact with its environment.” (Carlson, How) A Field Robot is expected to work outdoors,...
Unmanned Ground Vehicles - Design Considerations for Snow and Cold Environments
It's that time of year when the white stuff falls from the sky across the US, and with it comes lower temperatures. These conditions must be taken into consideration when designing a vehicle for outdoor use. A few definitions from...
Vala applications on Embedded Linux: maybe a cleaver chice [part 1]
Vala is a sexy, open source, high level programming language that appeared in 2006, it counts with a modern typing system, is object oriented, compiled and statically typed, it has a almost identical syntax to C# and is maintained by GNOME. The...
How to Succeed in Motor Control: Olaus Magnus, Donald Rumsfeld, and YouTube
Almost four years ago, I had this insight — we were doing it wrong! Most of the application notes on motor control were about the core algorithms: various six-step or field-oriented control methods, with Park and Clarke transforms,...
Round Round Get Around: Why Fixed-Point Right-Shifts Are Just Fine
Today’s topic is rounding in embedded systems, or more specifically, why you don’t need to worry about it in many cases.One of the issues faced in computer arithmetic is that exact arithmetic requires an ever-increasing bit length to...
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...
Experiences with the Linux Real Time Scheduler
●1 commentI have recently been helping with embedded software design and development for a data acquisition and visualization device. The software executes within an embedded Linux context and consists of various animated user interfaces rendering the...
Favorite Tools - Look Up Tables
●1 commentAs we grow in our engineering careers, we must continually add new tools to our collective tool kits. One favorite tool in my toolkit will be obvious to many experienced embedded software engineers. I still remember learning this approach early...
Ten Little Algorithms, Part 3: Welford's Method (and Friends)
●2 commentsOther articles in this series: Part 1: Russian Peasant Multiplication Part 2: The Single-Pole Low-Pass Filter Last time we talked about a low-pass filter, and we saw that a one-line algorithm could filter out high-frequency noise, and...
How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part II
●4 commentsIn Part I we talked about some of the issues around discrete-time proportional-integral (PI) controllers: various forms and whether to use the canonical form for z-transforms (don't do it!) order of operation in the integral term: whether to...
MSP430 LaunchPad Tutorial - Part 4 - UART Transmission
●3 commentsToday we are going to learn how to communicate using UART with the Launchpad. For this purpose I will replace the default microcontroller that comes with the board with the MSP430G2553. It is the most powerful device in the MSP430 Value Line and...
Boot Sequence for an ARM based embedded system
●6 commentsHello all, Allow me to introduce myself. I am Deeksha and I come from plains of North India. My tryst with embedded technologies has been 5 years long and every single day I am amazed with the vastness and learning involved. The thing with...
VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench
●4 comments[quicklinks]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...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Interrupts
●1 comment[quicklinks] It's Too Soon To Talk About Interrupts! That, at least, could be one reaction to this chapter. But over the years I've become convinced that new microcontroller programmers should understand interrupts before being...
MSP430 Launchpad Tutorial - Part 1 - Basics
●4 commentsTI'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...
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part IV: DC Link Decoupling and Why Electrolytic Capacitors Are Not Enough
●3 commentsThose of you who read my earlier articles about H-bridges, and followed them closely, have noticed there's some unfinished business. Well, here it is. Just so you know, I've been nervous about writing the fourth (and hopefully final) part of this...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Driving WS2812 RGB LEDs
●4 comments[quicklinks] This tutorial chapter is a bit of a detour, but I think an interesting and useful one. It introduces a bit of assembly language programming, and demonstrates bit-banging a tight serial data protocol. And it deals...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part I: Idempotence
●2 commentsThere 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...
