So You Want To Be An Embedded Systems Developer
Then listen now to what I say. Just get an electric guitar and take some time and learn how to play. Oh, wait, that's a song by the Byrds. But the strategy is the same. Get some information and tools and learn how to use them. No need to...
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XI: Pseudorandom Number Generation
Last time we looked at the use of LFSRs in counters and position encoders. This time we’re going to look at pseudorandom number generation, and why you may — or may not — want to use LFSRs for this purpose. But first —...
Introduction to Deep Insight Analysis for RTOS Based Applications
Over the past several years, embedded systems have become extremely complex. As systems become more complex, they become harder and more time consuming to debug. It isn’t uncommon for development teams to spend more than 40% development cycle...
Ten Little Algorithms, Part 6: Green’s Theorem and Swept-Area Detection
Other articles in this series: Part 1: Russian Peasant Multiplication Part 2: The Single-Pole Low-Pass Filter Part 3: Welford's Method (And Friends) Part 4: Topological Sort Part 5: Quadratic Extremum Interpolation and Chandrupatla's...
Donald Knuth Is the Root of All Premature Optimization
This article is about something profound that a brilliant young professor at Stanford wrote nearly 45 years ago, and now we’re all stuck with it. TL;DR The idea, basically, is that even though optimization of computer software to execute...
Intel 8088 - A blast from the past
The Intel 8088 is an 8 bit processor related to the 16 bit 8086. The Microcomputer class consisted of wire-wrapping the chips to perfboard using sockets.I had taken computers apart, soldered, etc., but had never used wire-wrapping to construct a...
Zebras Hate You For No Reason: Why Amdahl's Law is Misleading in a World of Cats (And Maybe in Ours Too)
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....
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,...
Best Firmware Architecture Attributes
●1 commentArchitecture of a firmware (FW) in a way defines the life-cycle of your product. Often companies start with a simple-version of a product as a response to the time-to-market caveat of the business, make some cash out...
VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design
[quicklinks]In earlier blog entries I introduced some of the basic VHDL concepts. First, developing a function ('VHDL tutorial') and later verifying and refining it ('VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench' and 'VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and...
Boot sequence for an ARM based embedded system -2
●3 commentsIn the last post, we discussed about the startup execution sequence on an ARM based embedded system in broader terms. In this post, we are going to cover the details of a startup code.These details are also available through various ARM resources...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Further Beginnings
●3 commentsEmbedded Programming Basics This tutorial entry will discuss some further embedded programming basics that you will need to understand before proceeding on to the LED blinky and other example programs. We will do this by looking at the...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
●1 comment[quicklinks] Doing the 7 Segment Shuffle The 7 segment display is ubiquitous in the modern world. Just about every digital clock, calculator and movie bomb has one. The treadmills at my gym have 6 or 7, each one displaying 3 or 4...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Timers
●2 comments[quicklinks] Timers - Because "When" Matters Computer programs are odd things, for one reason because they have no concept of time. They may have the concept of sequential execution, but the time between instructions can be...
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...
Analog-to-Digital Confusion: Pitfalls of Driving an ADC
●2 commentsImagine the following scenario:You're a successful engineer (sounds nice, doesn't it!) working on a project with three or four circuit boards. More than even you can handle, so you give one of them over to your coworker Wayne to design....
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Hello World
●3 comments[quicklinks] Embedded Hello World A standard first program on an embedded platform is the blinking LED. Getting an LED to blink demonstrates that you have your toolchain set up correctly, that you are able to download your program...
MSP430 Launchpad Tutorial - Part 2 - Interrupts and timers
●4 commentsWhat is an "interrupt"? It is a signal that informs our MCU that a certain event has happened, causing the interruption of the normal flow of the main program and the execution of an "interrupt routine", that handles the event and takes a...
