Getting Started With Zephyr: DTS vs DTSI vs Overlays
Devicetrees can be daunting for traditional embedded software engineers that are new to Zephyr. In this blog post, I address these fears and show how navigating Devicetrees can be much easier if you understand that they represent the layered structure of the underlying hardware.
Getting Started With Zephyr: Using GDB To Fix a Driver Bug
In this blog post, I show how to use GDB to debug an issue encountered with a TSL2591 light sensor driver in Zephyr. The fix was submitted and successfully incorporated into The Zephyr Project.
C to C++: Using Abstract Interfaces to Create Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL)
In C to C++, we've been exploring how to transition from a C developer to a C++ developer when working in embedded system. In this post, we will explore how to leverage classes to create hardware abstraction layers (HAL). You'll learn about the various inheritance mechanisms, what an virtual function is, and how to create an abstract class.
The three laws of safe embedded systems
This short article is part of an ongoing series in which I aim to explore some techniques that may be useful for developers and organisations that are beginning their first safety-related embedded project.
NULL pointer protection with ARM Cortex-M MPU
This post explains how you can set up the ARM Cortex-M MPU (Memory Protection Unit) to protect thy code from dragons, demons, core dumps, and numberless other foul creatures awaiting thee after thou dereference the NULL pointer.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 3
Jack Ganssle shows us what we can learn by studying previous failures - and why this is essential for anyone working in embedded systems.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XV: Error Detection and Correction
Lost Secrets of the H-Bridge, Part V: Gate Drives for Dummies
Learn the most important issues in power MOSFET and IGBT gate drives: - Transistor behavior during switching - Calculating turn-on and turn-off times - Passive components used between gate drive IC and transistor - Reverse recovery - Capacitively-coupled spurious turn-on - Factors that influence a good choice of turn-on and turn-off times - Gate drive supply voltage management - Bootstrap gate drives - Design issues impacting reliability
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.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 3
Jack Ganssle shows us what we can learn by studying previous failures - and why this is essential for anyone working in embedded systems.
Vintage multi-core and “so long”
A personal and historical perspective on multi-core system design.
Working with Microchip PIC 8-bit Interrupts
This fifth and final post of the Getting Started with Microchip PIC 8 Bit Development series looks at interrupts on 8-bit PIC microcontrollers. After a review of basic interrupt functionality, actual implementation is explored through implementation of a four bit counter driven via Timer0 interrupts whose value is displayed through four LEDs on Microchip's Curiosity HPC Development Board.
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.
Hidden Gems from the Embedded Online Conference Archives - Part 1
Discussion of a "hidden gem" from the Embedded Online Conference archives!
Optimizing Hardware Design: Reducing Iterations with DSM
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
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
The keyword static in C and C++ has multiple uses, which are not always well understood.
The Most Annoying Sound
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.
3 Tips for Developing Embedded Systems with AI
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.
FSM - Let 'em talk
No state machine is an island. State machines do not exist in a vacuum, they need to "talk" to their environment and each other to share information and provide synchronization to perform the system functions. In this conclusive article, you will find what kind of problems and which critical areas you need to pay attention to when designing a concurrent system. Although the focus is on state machines, the consideration applies to every system that involves more than one execution thread.
Are We Shooting Ourselves in the Foot with Stack Overflow?
Most traditional, beaten-path memory layouts allocate the stack space above the data sections in RAM, even though the stack grows “down” (towards the lower memory addresses) in most embedded processors. This arrangement puts your program data in the path of destruction of a stack overflow. In other words, you violate the first Gun Safety Rule (ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction!) and you end up shooting yourself in the foot. This article shows how to locate the stack at the BEGINNING of RAM and thus point it in the "safe" direction.
C to C++: Bridging the Gap from C Structures to Classes
In our last post, C to C++: Proven Techniques for Embedded Systems Transformation, we started to discuss the different ways that C++ can be used to write embedded software. You saw that there is no reason to be overwhelmed by trying to adopt...
Chebyshev Approximation and How It Can Help You Save Money, Win Friends, and Influence People
Well... maybe that's a stretch. I don't think I can recommend anything to help you win friends. Not my forte. But I am going to try to convince you why you should know about Chebyshev approximation, which is a technique for figuring out how...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Interrupts
[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...
My Lowest-Friction Embedded Project Was Also the One That Shouldn't Have Worked
Ralph Hempel recounts the LEGO Powered Up rework that, against every external constraint, turned into the lowest-friction embedded development environment of his career. The talk connects the specific tools and habits that made it work to five soft qualities that any struggling team can start building with small experiments, not big-bang process changes.
You Don't Need an RTOS (Part 3)
In this third article I'll share with you a few cooperative schedulers (with a mix of both free and commercial licenses) that implement a few of the OS primitives that the "Superduperloop" is currently missing, possibly giving you a ready-to-go solution for your system. On the other hand, I don't think it's all that hard to add thread flags, binary and counting semaphores, event flags, mailboxes/queues, a simple Observer pattern, and something I call a "marquee" to the "Superduperloop"; I'll show you how to do that in the second half of this article and the next. Although it will take a little more work than just using one of the projects above, it will give you the maximum amount of control over your system and it will let you write tasks in ways you could only dream of using an RTOS or other off-the-shelf system.
Cutting Through the Confusion with ARM Cortex-M Interrupt Priorities
The insanely popular ARM Cortex-M processor offers very versatile interrupt priority management, but unfortunately, the multiple priority numbering conventions used in managing the interrupt priorities are often counter-intuitive, inconsistent,...
Quickfire Heuristics: A Fast Usability Evaluation Framework for Lean Hardware Teams
That device with the single LED that requires you to count blink patterns just to understand system status. The button you must hold for 8 seconds, which also performs four other actions depending on hold duration. These are not accidents of negligence; they are the predictable output of development processes that have no rigorous usability evaluation component. Usability tends to slip through the gaps of standard engineering reviews, surfacing late, when design flexibility is already gone. This article introduces a framework that adapts Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics, for hardware and embedded systems, translating each principle into concrete evaluation questions for physical interfaces, firmware state machines, constrained displays, and cross-layer interactions. Using a smartwatch as the running example, it also introduces a structured session format, maps the framework to key lifecycle stages, and extends it to manufacturing, test, and field service contexts.
