EmbeddedRelated.com

Examining The Stack For Fun And Profit

Steve Branam February 19, 20201 comment

Well, maybe not so much for profit, but certainly for fun. This is a wandering journey of exploration and discovery, learning a variety of interesting and useful things.

One of the concerns with an embedded system is how much memory it needs, known as the memory footprint. This consists of the persistent storage needed for the program (i.e. the flash memory or filesystem space that stores the executable image), and the volatile storage needed to hold the data while executing over long...


Linux Kernel Development - Part 1: Hello Kernel!

Denis Cavalli June 2, 20192 comments

Our very first program in every language or framework usually is the notorious "Hello World" program. For this Linux Kernel Modules Development introduction we will follow the same concept, but instead of the usual "Hello World" we will make a "Hello Kernel!" and you will understand the reason in a few moments. Note that in this article I will not focus on a deep explanation about this topic for the moment, since this is only the introduction.

But before we dive into code we need to have the...


Off the shelf availability of Custom IoT Gateway

Prasan Dutt May 12, 2019

Any IoT implementation requires a gateway. Since most industrial gateways comes at a price above average, choosing a right gateway for your new IoT requirement could be a daunting task. With the advancement in IIoT, several segments of industry use cases are popping up and each with their unique requirements. For example, condition monitoring of a thermal power plant, predictive maintenance of factory heavy machinery and asset tracking of containers in a shipping yard etc. Every such...


How to Give Persistent Names To USB-Serial Devices on Ubuntu 14.04

Tayyar GUZEL May 22, 2017

If you have a bunch of USB-serial devices connected to your dock station and you needed to bind your USB-serial devices under static names so that all the USB-serial devices don't get to be assigned to random names by "udev" manager when you re-plug your laptop to the dock station, follow the instructions below. I will share the udev rules I created as a reference and give the step by step instructions to achieve persistent naming. All the steps worked on my Ubuntu 14.04...


Vala applications on Embedded Linux: maybe a clever choice [part 1]

Felipe Lavratti December 19, 2016

Vala is a sexy, open source, high level programming language that appeared in 2006, it counts with a modern typing system, is object oriented, compiled and statically typed, it has a almost identical syntax to C# and is maintained by GNOME. The language was created as a power abstraction of the GLib and GTK libraries, two considerably lightweight and powerful libraries written in C, and it is used in projects such as GNOME Clocks, Shotwell, GXml and Elementary OS.

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Surprising Linux Real Time Scheduler Behavior

Matthew Eshleman November 5, 2016

I have recently been helping with embedded software design and development for a data acquisition and visualization device. The software executes within an embedded Linux context and consists of various animated user interfaces rendering the acquired data.

The data is received via a UART and a SPI connection. During project development we noticed poor UART data latency issues during heavy user interface animations. For this product to properly meet its acquisition requirements, the UART...


Handling latency in data acquisition systems

Fabien Le Mentec November 8, 2015

In recent projects, I found myself working with data acquisition systems. For instance: PCIe/10GbE readouts for 2D XRay detectors (RASHPA slides, RASHPA paper) instruments mixing 1D signal acquisition and triggering, microcontroller based system for audio transmission: (NRF spearker)


Using the C language to program the am335x PRU

Fabien Le Mentec June 7, 201481 comments
Introduction

Some weeks ago, I published an article on how we used the PRU to implement a power supply control loop having hard realtime constraints:

//www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php

Writing this kind of logic in assembly language is not easy. First the assembly language itself may be difficult to learn depending on your background. Then, fixed and floating point arithmetics require lot of code. While macros help to handle the complexity, they still are error prone as you...


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...


Getting Started with (Apache) NuttX RTOS - Part 1

Alan C Assis June 2, 20234 comments

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!


Getting Started With Embedded Linux - From Nothing To A Login Prompt

Mohammed Billoo September 28, 2022

One of the famous observations that have been made related to embedded systems is referred to as “Moore’s Law”, which states that the number of transistors in integrated circuits doubles every year. This observation has held mostly true for the past several decades, so powerful CPUs are no longer simply relegated to servers, desktops, and laptops. Instead, we see powerful CPUs with increased capabilities being introduced into embedded systems on devices that live at “the edge”....


Surprising Linux Real Time Scheduler Behavior

Matthew Eshleman November 5, 2016

I have recently been helping with embedded software design and development for a data acquisition and visualization device. The software executes within an embedded Linux context and consists of various animated user interfaces rendering the acquired data.

The data is received via a UART and a SPI connection. During project development we noticed poor UART data latency issues during heavy user interface animations. For this product to properly meet its acquisition requirements, the UART...


Vala applications on Embedded Linux: maybe a clever choice [part 1]

Felipe Lavratti December 19, 2016

Vala is a sexy, open source, high level programming language that appeared in 2006, it counts with a modern typing system, is object oriented, compiled and statically typed, it has a almost identical syntax to C# and is maintained by GNOME. The language was created as a power abstraction of the GLib and GTK libraries, two considerably lightweight and powerful libraries written in C, and it is used in projects such as GNOME Clocks, Shotwell, GXml and Elementary OS.

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Peripheral Interaction Without a Linux Device Driver Using Spidev

Mohammed Billoo November 20, 2022
Overview

When integrating a new peripheral onto an embedded Linux platform, we might think we always need to implement a kernel module to serve as a device driver. However, as we all know, absolutes such as “always” and “never” are rarely true. The same is true in this case. Implementing a device driver in kernel space on an embedded Linux platform should only be undertaken if the performance requirements of the final application demand it. In most instances, a userspace...


Five Embedded Linux Topics for Newbies !

George Emad May 9, 2024

Are you an embedded systems enthusiast looking to broaden your horizons with embedded Linux? explore those 5 topics.


BusyBox; The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux

George Emad March 2, 2024

In this article we cover the BusyBox, how it's designed to be optimized for embedded targets, and how to configure and build it in different ways, we also covered the license and limitation, which led to the development of ToyBox, I hope you enjoyed the article, please leave a comment for any correction or suggestions.


Understanding Yocto Project Layers: A Modular Approach to Embedded Systems Development

Aaksha Jaywant September 16, 2024

In the world of embedded systems, flexibility and modularity are key to managing complex projects efficiently. The Yocto Project, a powerful build system for creating custom Linux distributions, embraces this philosophy through the use of layers. These layers are essentially sets of repositories that contain the instructions and metadata required to build a specific target image. By leveraging layers, developers can modularize their projects, reusing and sharing previously developed metadata...