7 Essential Steps for Reducing Power Consumption in Embedded Devices
Reducing the amount of power your embedded device is consuming is not trivial. With so many devices moving to battery operations today, maximizing battery life can be the difference between a happy, raving customer and an unhappy one that ruins your company's reputation. This post explores seven steps for optimizing your embedded systems' power consumption. You'll gain insights into the steps and techniques necessary along with receiving a few resources to help you on your journey.
Peripheral Interaction Without a Linux Device Driver Using Spidev
Kernel-space drivers are not always necessary; many SPI peripherals can be handled from userspace using spidev. This post shows how to expose an SPI device through the device tree and kernel, wire a Bosch BMP388 to a Toradex Apalis iMX8 Ixora board, and implement a C userspace app that uses ioctl to read the chip ID. Practical tips on SPI settings and logic-analyzer validation are included.
Off the shelf availability of Custom IoT Gateway
Choosing the right gateway can make or break an IoT deployment, yet industrial gateways are often expensive and generic. This post walks through practical criteria for off-the-shelf and custom gateways, covering edge computing trade-offs, mainframe versus embedded Linux, SoC and ADC choices, interfacing and debugging needs, and when to design your own hardware for real-time or protocol demands.
Embedded Programming Video Course Teaches RTOS
From basic foreground/background loops to priority-inheritance protocols, this free video course walks you through building and improving an RTOS step by step. Lessons cover manual context switching, round-robin and preemptive priority schedulers, efficient thread blocking, and synchronization primitives. The series finishes with a practical port to a professional RTOS in the QP/C ecosystem, showing semaphores, mutexes, and ways to prevent priority inversion.
Cutting Through the Confusion with ARM Cortex-M Interrupt Priorities
ARM Cortex-M interrupt priorities are famously confusing because numeric priority values are inverted relative to urgency and several different conventions coexist. This post cuts through the mess by explaining NVIC register bit placement, the CMSIS NVIC_SetPriority convention, preempt versus subpriority grouping, and when to use PRIMASK or BASEPRI. Read on for practical rules to avoid subtle priority bugs in real-time firmware.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Ada - 7 Segments and Catching Errors
Mike demos an Ada implementation of a multiplexed 7-segment driver on the STM32F407 Discovery board, highlighting Ada idioms like protected objects for ISRs and packed-boolean GPIO mapping. The post shows practical timer setup for Timer 6, how to avoid ARR/CNT races, and how Ada's runtime range checks plus a last-chance handler surface out-of-range errors with file and line diagnostics.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
Seven-segment displays can eat dozens of GPIO pins and dozens of resistors, but multiplexing trades pins for time and cuts component count dramatically. Mike Silva shows a hands-on AVR C implementation with segment encoding, a 100 Hz display scan ISR, several integer-to-digit conversion techniques, and software workarounds for messy pin mappings. He also demonstrates a timer "leapfrog" to reuse one timer for two tasks and compares performance so you can choose the best approach for your MCU.
Using the Beaglebone PRU to achieve realtime at low cost
Fabien Le Mentec shows how the BeagleBone Black's PRU coprocessors can run hard realtime control loops, removing the need for an FPGA or dedicated microcontroller. He walks through Linux setup, device tree enabling, assembler and loader tools, and a timer example that reads ADCs and drives PWM from PRU code. The post highlights community SDKs and a recent TI Code Composer Studio option for C-based PRU development.
Embedded Systems - free EdX course by UT-Austin!
Lonnie shares a free edX Embedded Systems course from UT Austin that teaches hands-on firmware using the TI Tiva Launchpad. The class centers on practical projects, culminating in an arcade-style shooter built with an 80 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 board and inexpensive peripherals like the Nokia 5110 display. It’s a low-cost path to move from hobby tools to industry-style microcontroller development.
How to install Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Xubuntu-desktop and Open JDK-7 on Beagleboard Rev. C2
Want to run Java GUI apps on a BeagleBoard Rev C2? This hands-on post walks through installing Ubuntu 12.04, adding the Xubuntu desktop, and getting OpenJDK-7 running, including SD flashing, u-boot and network setup, display and audio tweaks, and a fix for XFCE login ownership problems. Follow the exact commands and small workarounds the author used to get a monitor, sound, and Java VM working on the board.
7 Essential Steps for Reducing Power Consumption in Embedded Devices
Reducing the amount of power your embedded device is consuming is not trivial. With so many devices moving to battery operations today, maximizing battery life can be the difference between a happy, raving customer and an unhappy one that ruins your company's reputation. This post explores seven steps for optimizing your embedded systems' power consumption. You'll gain insights into the steps and techniques necessary along with receiving a few resources to help you on your journey.
Cutting Through the Confusion with ARM Cortex-M Interrupt Priorities
ARM Cortex-M interrupt priorities are famously confusing because numeric priority values are inverted relative to urgency and several different conventions coexist. This post cuts through the mess by explaining NVIC register bit placement, the CMSIS NVIC_SetPriority convention, preempt versus subpriority grouping, and when to use PRIMASK or BASEPRI. Read on for practical rules to avoid subtle priority bugs in real-time firmware.
Boot Sequence for an ARM based embedded system
Deeksha draws on five years in embedded systems to introduce the ARM boot sequence used on Boot ROM based platforms. The post outlines what the Boot ROM does at reset, how it probes boot media, and when control is passed to a software bootloader. It also highlights key differences between NOR XiP and NAND RAM-loading and the need for bad-block handling.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
Seven-segment displays can eat dozens of GPIO pins and dozens of resistors, but multiplexing trades pins for time and cuts component count dramatically. Mike Silva shows a hands-on AVR C implementation with segment encoding, a 100 Hz display scan ISR, several integer-to-digit conversion techniques, and software workarounds for messy pin mappings. He also demonstrates a timer "leapfrog" to reuse one timer for two tasks and compares performance so you can choose the best approach for your MCU.
Using the Beaglebone PRU to achieve realtime at low cost
Fabien Le Mentec shows how the BeagleBone Black's PRU coprocessors can run hard realtime control loops, removing the need for an FPGA or dedicated microcontroller. He walks through Linux setup, device tree enabling, assembler and loader tools, and a timer example that reads ADCs and drives PWM from PRU code. The post highlights community SDKs and a recent TI Code Composer Studio option for C-based PRU development.
C++ on microcontrollers 1 - introduction, and an output pin class
Wouter van Ooijen shows how small C++ abstractions make GPIO code portable and reusable. Starting from a simple output_pin interface he implements concrete pins for an LPC2148 GPIO and a 74HC595 shift register, then composes behaviors with wrappers like tee and invert. The post demonstrates virtual methods, references, and constructor initialization lists to build drivers you can reuse across boards.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Ada - 7 Segments and Catching Errors
Mike demos an Ada implementation of a multiplexed 7-segment driver on the STM32F407 Discovery board, highlighting Ada idioms like protected objects for ISRs and packed-boolean GPIO mapping. The post shows practical timer setup for Timer 6, how to avoid ARR/CNT races, and how Ada's runtime range checks plus a last-chance handler surface out-of-range errors with file and line diagnostics.
Embedded Programming Video Course Teaches RTOS
From basic foreground/background loops to priority-inheritance protocols, this free video course walks you through building and improving an RTOS step by step. Lessons cover manual context switching, round-robin and preemptive priority schedulers, efficient thread blocking, and synchronization primitives. The series finishes with a practical port to a professional RTOS in the QP/C ecosystem, showing semaphores, mutexes, and ways to prevent priority inversion.
Peripheral Interaction Without a Linux Device Driver Using Spidev
Kernel-space drivers are not always necessary; many SPI peripherals can be handled from userspace using spidev. This post shows how to expose an SPI device through the device tree and kernel, wire a Bosch BMP388 to a Toradex Apalis iMX8 Ixora board, and implement a C userspace app that uses ioctl to read the chip ID. Practical tips on SPI settings and logic-analyzer validation are included.
An overview of Linux Boot Process for Embedded Systems
Booting Linux on embedded hardware collapses PC boot stages into a single bootloader, and understanding the early steps helps troubleshoot low-level failures. Kunal Singh breaks down the sequence from the bootstrap firmware and primary/secondary bootloaders through zImage decompression, MMU and page table setup, start_kernel, and the initrd pivot to the root filesystem. Practical focus favors ARM examples.
Using the Beaglebone PRU to achieve realtime at low cost
Fabien Le Mentec shows how the BeagleBone Black's PRU coprocessors can run hard realtime control loops, removing the need for an FPGA or dedicated microcontroller. He walks through Linux setup, device tree enabling, assembler and loader tools, and a timer example that reads ADCs and drives PWM from PRU code. The post highlights community SDKs and a recent TI Code Composer Studio option for C-based PRU development.
Boot Sequence for an ARM based embedded system
Deeksha draws on five years in embedded systems to introduce the ARM boot sequence used on Boot ROM based platforms. The post outlines what the Boot ROM does at reset, how it probes boot media, and when control is passed to a software bootloader. It also highlights key differences between NOR XiP and NAND RAM-loading and the need for bad-block handling.
C++ on microcontrollers 1 - introduction, and an output pin class
Wouter van Ooijen shows how small C++ abstractions make GPIO code portable and reusable. Starting from a simple output_pin interface he implements concrete pins for an LPC2148 GPIO and a 74HC595 shift register, then composes behaviors with wrappers like tee and invert. The post demonstrates virtual methods, references, and constructor initialization lists to build drivers you can reuse across boards.
An overview of Linux Boot Process for Embedded Systems
Booting Linux on embedded hardware collapses PC boot stages into a single bootloader, and understanding the early steps helps troubleshoot low-level failures. Kunal Singh breaks down the sequence from the bootstrap firmware and primary/secondary bootloaders through zImage decompression, MMU and page table setup, start_kernel, and the initrd pivot to the root filesystem. Practical focus favors ARM examples.
Boot sequence for an ARM based embedded system -2
DM walks through the concrete steps of an ARM system startup, from the reset vector to handing control to C. The post explains what the early assembly reset code must do: set system registers, initialize stacks, set up the MMU, copy .data and clear .bss, and remap the vector table into RAM for faster interrupts. It finishes with external memory bring-up and loading an OS image.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
Seven-segment displays can eat dozens of GPIO pins and dozens of resistors, but multiplexing trades pins for time and cuts component count dramatically. Mike Silva shows a hands-on AVR C implementation with segment encoding, a 100 Hz display scan ISR, several integer-to-digit conversion techniques, and software workarounds for messy pin mappings. He also demonstrates a timer "leapfrog" to reuse one timer for two tasks and compares performance so you can choose the best approach for your MCU.
C++ on microcontrollers 2 - LPCXpresso, LPC-link, Code Sourcery, lpc21isp, linkerscript, LPC1114 startup
Wouter van Ooijen walks you through getting C++ to run on a tiny LPC1114 board using LPCXpresso hardware and a command-line toolchain. He demonstrates a minimal linker script and startup code that initialize .data and .bss and call C++ global constructors, shows how to flash via the on-chip bootloader with lpc21isp when LPC-link is locked, and includes practical GPIO and SysTick LED examples.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Ada - 7 Segments and Catching Errors
Mike demos an Ada implementation of a multiplexed 7-segment driver on the STM32F407 Discovery board, highlighting Ada idioms like protected objects for ISRs and packed-boolean GPIO mapping. The post shows practical timer setup for Timer 6, how to avoid ARR/CNT races, and how Ada's runtime range checks plus a last-chance handler surface out-of-range errors with file and line diagnostics.
7 Essential Steps for Reducing Power Consumption in Embedded Devices
Reducing the amount of power your embedded device is consuming is not trivial. With so many devices moving to battery operations today, maximizing battery life can be the difference between a happy, raving customer and an unhappy one that ruins your company's reputation. This post explores seven steps for optimizing your embedded systems' power consumption. You'll gain insights into the steps and techniques necessary along with receiving a few resources to help you on your journey.
C++ on microcontrollers 4 – input pins, and decoding a rotary switch
Wouter van Ooijen shows how to extend a small C++ I/O library for microcontrollers to support input pins and mixed I/O, and how to decode a rotary switch reliably. The post walks through a safe class hierarchy for input, output, and bidirectional pins, then builds a quadrature decoder with a saturating counter and an HC595 seven-segment demo you can run on LPCXpresso hardware.
