Getting Started With Zephyr: Devicetrees
This blog post provides an introduction to the "Devicetree", another unique concept in The Zephyr Project. We learn about the basic syntax of a device tree and how its structure and hierarchy mirror hardware, from the SoC to the final board. We also see how hardware described in a devicetree can be referenced and controlled in the source code of a Zephyr-based application.
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.
Call for Bloggers!
Are you passionate about embedded systems? Do you have valuable insights, tips, or stories to share with the embedded community? Do you want to reach a large and engaged audience of embedded enthusiasts and professionals? We are currently looking at adding a few more inspired writers to our team of bloggers.
Bellegram, a wireless DIY doorbell that sends you a Telegram message
A wireless button that uses the M5 STAMP PICO and Mongoose to send a Telegram message when pressed. The code is written in C
Getting Started with (Apache) NuttX RTOS Part 2 - Looking Inside and Creating Your Customized Image
In the previous article (https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/1524.p...) we saw how to run NuttX RTOS using the SIMulator. Today we will see how NuttX's directory tree is organized and how to use the menuconfig to enable some applications, including some tricks to search and solve dependencies.
NuttX Directories organization:
If you have previously compiled the Linux kernel or the U-Boot bootloader you will see that the NuttX source tree organization is...
Moulding the Embedded Systems Engineers of Tomorrow: Adapting to a Constantly Transforming Technological Terrain
Embedded systems engineers, previously focused on device architecture, are now steering the digital era, encompassing firmware, software, complex silicon, and cloud computing. To keep pace, mastery in new areas like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cloud technologies is critical. In today's highly connected world, security is foundational to design, necessitating knowledge in encryption, secure coding, and data protection laws. Additionally, expertise in AI and ML is essential for managing vast global data, requiring understanding of ethical implications and effective system design for data analysis. The advent of cloud technology mandates learning about cloud architectures and data security. In this fast-paced field, continuous learning and adapting these new skills is the key to staying relevant and spearheading future advancements.
Getting Started With Zephyr: Kconfig
In this blog post, we briefly look at Kconfig, one of the core pieces of the Zephyr infrastructure. Kconfig allows embedded software developers to turn specific subsystems on or off within Zephyr efficiently and control their behavior. We also learn how we can practically use Kconfig to control the features of our application using the two most common mechanisms.
An Iterative Approach to USART HAL Design using ChatGPT
Discover how to leverage ChatGPT and an iterative process to design and generate a USART Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for embedded systems, enhancing code reusability and scalability. Learn the step-by-step journey, improvements made, and the potential for generating HALs for other peripherals.
Modern C++ in Embedded Development: (Don't Fear) The ++
While C is still the language of choice for embedded development, the adoption of C++ has grown steadily. Yet, reservations about dynamic memory allocation and fears of unnecessary code bloat have kept many in the C camp. This discourse aims to explore the intricacies of employing C++ in embedded systems, negotiating the issues of dynamic memory allocation, and exploiting the benefits of C++ offerings like std::array and constexpr. Moreover, it ventures into the details of the zero-overhead principle and the nuanced distinctions between C and C++. The takeaway? Armed with the right knowledge and a careful approach, C++ can indeed serve as a powerful, safer, and more efficient tool for embedded development.
Getting Started with (Apache) NuttX RTOS - Part 1
NuttX RTOS is used in many products from companies like Sony, Xiaomi, Samsung, Google/Fitbit, WildernessLabs and many other companis. So, probably you are already using NuttX even without knowing it, like the you was using Linux on your TV, WiFi router more than 10 years ago and didn't know too! Today you will have the chance to discover a little bit of this fantastic Linux-like RTOS! Are you ready? So, let's get started!
Memory Mapped I/O in C
Interacting with memory mapped device registers is at the base of all embedded development. Let's explore what tools the C language - standard of the industry - provide the developer with to face this task.
FPGA skills for the modern world
With the ever increasing number of applications involving video processing, AI or edge computing the appetite for suitably skilled FPGA Engineers has never been higher from the market which is expected to grow to $15 billion USD by 2027!
In terms of industries opportunities can be typically found within:
- Automotive
- Aerospace
- Defense
- Data Processing
However this list is certainly not exhaustive as any application requiring algorithms which can leverage from highly parallel and...
Review: Embedded Software Design: A Practical Approach to Architecture, Processes, and Coding Techniques
Introduction
Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book to review.
Embedded Software Design: A Practical Approach to Architecture, Processes, and Coding Techniques, by Jacob Beningo, is an excellent introduction to strategies for embedded systems design and bringing those designs to fruition. Renowned embedded systems expert Jack Ganssle was the technical reviewer.
This is a practical how-to book on the modern professional practice of embedded systems...
ESC Boston's Videos are Now Up
In my last blog, I told you about my experience at ESC Boston and the few videos that I was planning to produce and publish. Here they are, please have a look and any feedback (positive or negative) is appreciated.
Short HighlightThis is a very short (one minute) montage of some of the footage that I shot at the show & conference. In future shows, I absolutely need to insert clips here and there of engineers saying a few words about the conference (why they...
Went 280km/h (174mph) in a Porsche Panamera in Germany!
Those of you who've been following my blog lately already know that I am going through some sort of mid-life crisis that involves going out there to meet people and make videos. It all started with Embedded World early this year, then continued at ESC Boston a couple of months ago and the latest chapter just concluded as I returned from Germany after spending a week at SEGGER's headquarters to produce a video to highlight their 25th anniversary.
Elliptic Curve Cryptography - Key Exchange and Signatures
Elliptic curve mathematics over finite fields helps solve the problem of exchanging secret keys for encrypted messages as well as proving a specific person signed a particular document. This article goes over simple algorithms for key exchange and digital signature using elliptic curve mathematics. These methods are the essence of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used in applications such as SSH, TLS and HTTPS.
Embedded World 2018 - The Interviews
Once again this year, I had the chance to go to Embedded World in Nuremberg Germany. And once again this year, I brought my video equipment to try and capture some of the most interesting things at the show.
Something new this year, I asked Jacob Beningo if he would partner with me in doing interviews with a few vendors. I would operate the camera while Jacob would ask the right questions to the vendors to make them talk about the key products/features that...
Recruiting New Bloggers!
Previous calls for bloggers have been very successful in recruiting some great communicators - Rick Lyons, Jason Sachs, Victor Yurkovsky, Mike Silva, Markus Nentwig, Gene Breniman, Stephen Friederichs,
VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic
In an earlier article on VHDL programming ("VHDL tutorial" and "VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench", I described a design for providing a programmable clock divider for a ADC sequencer. In this example, I showed how to generate a clock signal (ADCClk), that was to be programmable over a series of fixed rates (20MHz, 10MHz, 4MHz, 2MHz, 1MHz and 400KHz), given a master clock rate of 40MHz. A reader of that article had written to ask if it was possible to extend the design to...
Mastering Modern FPGA Skills for Engineers
In the rapidly evolving tech industry, engineers must acquire proficiency in modern FPGA skills. These skills empower engineers to optimize designs, minimize resource usage, and efficiently address FPGA design challenges while ensuring functionality, security, and compliance.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XVI: Reed-Solomon Error Correction
Last time, we talked about error correction and detection, covering some basics like Hamming distance, CRCs, and Hamming codes. If you are new to this topic, I would strongly suggest going back to read that article before this one.
This time we are going to cover Reed-Solomon codes. (I had meant to cover this topic in Part XV, but the article was getting to be too long, so I’ve split it roughly in half.) These are one of the workhorses of error-correction, and they are used in...
VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic
In an earlier article on VHDL programming ("VHDL tutorial" and "VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench", I described a design for providing a programmable clock divider for a ADC sequencer. In this example, I showed how to generate a clock signal (ADCClk), that was to be programmable over a series of fixed rates (20MHz, 10MHz, 4MHz, 2MHz, 1MHz and 400KHz), given a master clock rate of 40MHz. A reader of that article had written to ask if it was possible to extend the design to...
Padé Delay is Okay Today
This article is going to be somewhat different in that I’m not really writing it for the typical embedded systems engineer. Rather it’s kind of a specialized topic, so don’t be surprised if you get bored and move on to something else. That’s fine by me.
Anyway, let’s just jump ahead to the punchline. Here’s a numerical simulation of a step response to a \( p=126, q=130 \) Padé approximation of a time delay:
Impressed? Maybe you should be. This...
Cortex-M Exception Handling (Part 2)
The first part of this article described the conditions for an exception request to be accepted by a Cortex-M processor, mainly concerning the relationship of its priority with respect to the current execution priority. This part will describe instead what happens after an exception request is accepted and becomes active.
PROCESSOR OPERATION AND PRIVILEGE MODEBefore discussing in detail the sequence of actions that occurs within the processor after an exception request...
The CRC Wild Goose Chase: PPP Does What?!?!?!
I got a bad feeling yesterday when I had to include reference information about a 16-bit CRC in a serial protocol document I was writing. And I knew it wasn’t going to end well.
The last time I looked into CRC algorithms was about five years ago. And the time before that… sometime back in 2004 or 2005? It seems like it comes up periodically, like the seventeen-year locust or sunspots or El Niño,...
Second-Order Systems, Part I: Boing!!
I’ve already written about the unexciting (but useful) 1st-order system, and about slew-rate limiting. So now it’s time to cover second-order systems.
The most common second-order systems are RLC circuits and spring-mass-damper systems.
Spring-mass-damper systems are fairly common; you’ve seen these before, whether you realize it or not. One household example of these is the spring doorstop (BOING!!):
(For what it’s worth: the spring...
Best Firmware Architecture Attributes
Architecture 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 of the product with a simple feature set. It takes only less than 2-3 years to reach a point where the company needs to develop multiple products derived from the same code base and multiple teams need to develop...
Free Goodies from Embedded World - What to Do Next?
I told you I would go on a hunt for free stuff at Embedded World in order to build a bundle for someone to win.
Lessons Learned from Embedded Code Reviews (Including Some Surprises)
My software team recently finished a round of code reviews for some of our motor controller code. I learned a lot from the experience, most notably why you would want to have code reviews in the first place.
My background is originally from the medical device industry. In the United States, software in medical devices gets a lot of scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration, and for good reason; it’s a place for complexity to hide latent bugs. (Can you say “
First-Order Systems: The Happy Family
Все счастли́вые се́мьи похо́жи друг на дру́га, ка́ждая несчастли́вая семья́ несчастли́ва по-сво́ему.— Лев Николаевич Толстой, Анна Каренина
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.— Lev Nicholaevich Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I was going to write an article about second-order systems, but then realized that it would be...
