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Free Sessions @ the 2023 Embedded Online Conference

Stephane Boucher April 21, 2023

Although the 2023 Embedded Online Conference will officially start only on Monday 04/24, today we are pre-releasing all Theatre Talks and Demos in order to give attendees a headstart over the weekend on a very busy program.

The good news is, you don't need a paid registration to access theatre talks and demos.  All you have to do is create an account on the EOC website and skip the payment part.  

Here are the 37 sessions that you can watch for...


STM32 VS Code Extension Under The Hood

Peter McLaughlin April 21, 2023

VS Code is becoming the "go to" environment for many developers. Increasingly, toolchain providers are publishing VS Code extensions and ST has recently followed suit. Additionally, CMake is significantly growing in popularity, with many projects adopting it for its ease of use and flexibility. This video shows how the STM32 VS Code extension works under the hood and how to get more out of it.

Specifically, we'll review the CMake files generated by the VS Code extension and how to modify...


Getting Started With Zephyr: West Manifest Customization

Mohammed Billoo April 4, 2023
Introduction

The Zephyr Project RTOS (https://zephyrproject.org/), or simply “Zephyr” as it is known colloquially, is an increasingly popular real-time operating system due to its native support for over 450 boards and countless peripherals. When starting with any embedded software project, the first task is to start from a known baseline. This can include cloning a repository from source control, which can be the case with embedded Linux, or downloading a zip file representing a...


Back from Embedded World 2023

Stephane Boucher March 23, 20231 comment

It was great to be back in Nuremberg for Embedded World after three long years. The trade show is probably the most significant event in the embedded systems industry, and it was a relief to see that it has survived the pandemic with more than 900 vendors exhibiting.

I recorded this video on the very first day when the doors opened.  What you see in the video is probably 10% or less of the full show floor.  I am always impressed by the size of...


Cracking the (embedded) Coding Interview

Manasi Rajan March 23, 2023

You never forget the day you land your first job. 

The thrill of receiving that call from your recruiter to tell you that you bagged your dream role! The relief when you finally see the offer letter you’ve been working towards for years. The pride in your parents' voices when you call home and say “Hey look Ma, I’ve made it!”

But before that, there’s the grueling screening process to get through. Tech interviews often last up to three months and companies can have five...


Visual Studio Code Extensions for Embedded Software Development

Jacob Beningo March 22, 20238 comments

Visual Studio Code has become one of the most popular IDEs in the world. To date, software developers have downloaded it more than 40 million times! I suspect you’ve at least heard of it, if not already attempting to use it. Visual Studio Code allows developers to easily customize their development environment which can help them accelerate development, minimize bugs, and make developing software overall much better.

One challenge with Visual Studio Code is that embedded software...


What to See at Embedded World 2023

Stephane Boucher March 6, 2023

Embedded World 2023 is just around the corner, and I am thrilled to be attending this year's edition in Nuremberg, Germany. The last time I was there was three years ago, and the world was on the cusp of a major pandemic. It was a surreal experience as many booths and exhibits were empty and cordoned off by security tape due to last-minute cancellations. It was clear that something big was happening. 

But with more than 900 vendors exhibiting this year, I'm glad to see that Embedded...


Review: Embedded Software Design: A Practical Approach to Architecture, Processes, and Coding Techniques

Steve Branam February 28, 2023
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...


C to C++: 3 Proven Techniques for Embedded Systems Transformation

Jacob Beningo February 7, 20234 comments

For 50 years, the C programming language has dominated the embedded software industry. Even today, more than 80% of embedded projects are using C; however, over the last few years, many teams have begun transitioning from C to C++. C++ offers embedded developers a robust, modern set of tools that can be used to write flexible, scalable, and reusable applications. As embedded applications become more complex and connected, teams need a more modern language to help them deal with the software...


Libgpiod - Toggling GPIOs The Right Way In Embedded Linux

Mohammed Billoo January 24, 2023
Overview

We all know that GPIO is one of the core elements of any embedded system. We use GPIOs to control LEDs and use them to monitor switches and button presses. In modern embedded systems, GPIOs can also be used as pins for other peripheral busses, such as SPI and I2C. Similar to the previous article on interacting with peripherals on an SPI bus in userspace via SPIdev (https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/1485.php), we can also control GPIOs from userspace on an embedded...


Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XVIII: Primitive Polynomial Generation

Jason Sachs August 6, 20182 comments

Last time we figured out how to reverse-engineer parameters of an unknown CRC computation by providing sample inputs and analyzing the corresponding outputs. One of the things we discovered was that the polynomial \( x^{16} + x^{12} + x^5 + 1 \) used in the 16-bit X.25 CRC is not primitive — which just means that all the nonzero elements in the corresponding quotient ring can’t be generated by powers of \( x \), and therefore the corresponding 16-bit LFSR with taps in bits 0, 5,...


Homebrew CPUs: Messing around with a J1

Victor Yurkovsky May 29, 2015

In this article I will examine James Bowman's excellent J1 CPU; I will then proceed to mess around with various parts of it, making it smaller, more appropriate to my particular application, and possibly faster.  I hope this will show you how easy it is to fiddle around with homemade CPUs and encourage you to make something weird and wonderful.

J1 CPU

My hat is off to James Bowman.  J1 is pretty cool.  It is a stack machine; it executes instructions in one cycle, it is...


VGA Output in 7 Slices. Really.

Victor Yurkovsky September 25, 20122 comments

Ridiculous? Read on - I will show you how to generate VGA timing in seven XilinxR Spartan3R slices.Some time ago I needed to output video to a VGA monitor for my Apple ][ FPGA clone.  Obviously (I thought), VGA's been done before and all I had to do was find some Verilog code and drop it into my design.  As is often the case (with me anyway), the task proved to be very different from my imagined 'couple of hours to integrate the IP'.I found some example code for my board.  I...


Spread the Word and Run a Chance to Win a Bundle of Goodies from Embedded World

Stephane Boucher February 21, 2019

Do you have a Twitter and/or Linkedin account?

If you do, please consider paying close attention for the next few days to the EmbeddedRelated Twitter account and to my personal Linkedin account (feel free to connect).  This is where I will be posting lots of updates about how the EmbeddedRelated.tv live streaming experience is going at Embedded World.

The most successful this live broadcasting experience will be, the better the chances that I will be able to do it...


A New Related Site!

Stephane Boucher September 22, 20222 comments

We are delighted to announce the launch of the very first new Related site in 15 years!  The new site will be dedicated to the trendy and quickly growing field of Machine Learning and will be called - drum roll please - MLRelated.com.

We think MLRelated fits perfectly well within the “Related” family, with:

  • the fast growth of TinyML, which is a topic of great interest to the EmbeddedRelated community
  • the use of Machine/Deep Learning in Signal Processing applications, which is of...

Fluxions for Fun and Profit: Euler, Trapezoidal, Verlet, or Runge-Kutta?

Jason Sachs September 30, 20132 comments

Today we're going to take another diversion from embedded systems, and into the world of differential equations, modeling, and computer simulation.

DON'T PANIC!

First of all, just pretend I didn't bring up anything complicated. We're exposed to the effects of differential equations every day, whether we realize it or not. Your car speedometer and odometer are related by a differential equation, and whether you like math or not, you probably have some comprehension of what's going on: you...


Supply Chain Games: What Have We Learned From the Great Semiconductor Shortage of 2021? (Part 3)

Jason Sachs December 10, 2022

Hello again! Today we’re going to take a closer look at Moore’s Law, semiconductor foundries, and semiconductor economics — and a game that explores the effect of changing economics on the supply chain.

We’ll try to answer some of these questions:

  • What does Moore’s Law really mean, and how does it impact the economics of semiconductor manufacturing?
  • How does the foundry business model work, and how is it affected by the different mix of technology...

StrangeCPU #3. Instruction Slides - The Strangest CPU Yet!

Victor Yurkovsky March 18, 201311 comments
Summary:

Decoding instructions with a Sliding Window system.  0-Bit Sliding Register Windows.

Table of Contents:

Levitating Globe Teardown, Part 1

Tim Wescott November 4, 20133 comments

I've been kicking some ideas around for a long time for a simple and inexpensive platform I could use for control systems experimentation for the beginner.  I want something that can be controlled easily in a basic fashion, yet that provides some depth: I want to be able to present ever-more challenging goals to the student, that can be attained by fancier control algorithms all on the same device.

I'm currently looking at magnetic levitation.  It's fun, it has the potential to be...


Favorite Tools: C++11 std::array

Matthew Eshleman February 26, 20172 comments

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 or outright ban the use of dynamic memory allocation, a feature typically accessed via the C library call "malloc" or the C++ allocator "new". When authoring software under such...


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