Designing for Humans: Viewing DFM and Industrialization Through the Lens of the Fitts MABA–MABA List
"Operator’s fault" and "Inadequate Training" are the phrases you typically hear when yield loss and stubborn manufacturing issues are discussed. While these factors may play a role, they rarely tell the whole story. This article views DFM and industrialization through the lens of a classic human factors principle; the Fitts MABA-MABA list, and highlights a critical, yet less-discussed factor: the lack of manufacturing-focused human factors considerations in product design. It explores practical examples like Proprioceptive Fatigue and Visual SNR, and shows how lots of chronic manufacturing issues are results of bad upstream design decisions, echoing the fact that in many cases, inspection exists not because it is inherently valuable, but because the design failed to encode correctness directly into the product or process. If you’ve ever wondered why "retraining" never seems to fix a recurring defect, this take on industrialization and manufacturing might explain why.
Stuck with Jira — and Stuckons
Jason Sachs vents about Jira’s quirks and why it still feels stuck despite years of fixes. He walks through concrete pain points: nonstandard markup, relentless notification noise, poor meta-task support, and limited analytics that make day-to-day engineering work harder. To explain why schedules blow up, he introduces a simple kepton model of planons, workons, and stuckons that highlights unexpected work.
Project Log: Pixelblaze Christmas Lights
Festive fun and the hacker spirit combine in my janky attempt to adorn my house with addressable LEDs! In this post, I show you how I used a Pixelblaze and a cheap strip of WS2811 RGB LEDs (and not a little bit of hot glue and paper clips) to make a super cool set of Christmas lights.
Baking in Process Improvements
Jason Sachs uses a backyard cookie-baking session with his niece to illustrate practical process improvements engineers can apply. He documents batch-by-batch tweaks — temperature, dough placement, and a pipelined scooping step — that raised throughput and improved quality, then connects the lesson to pilot projects and small automations like a Python script for JIRA. The piece makes the case for quick experiments and a culture that rewards refinement.
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.
Breaking AES with an Oscilloscope
AES is a powerful encryption algorithm that protects some our most important secrets. But did you know that many devices are inadvertently leaking the value of their private key through their power pins?! Join me in this special preview of my upcoming workshop at the Embedded Systems Summit (14-16 October 2025 in San Jose, CA) as we explore the world of hardware security and discover just how easy it could be to break AES encryption with only an oscilloscope and some math.
Why Containers Are the Cheat Code for Embedded DevOps
Embedded software teams have long accepted toolchain setup as “part of the job,” but it’s a hidden productivity killer. Manual installs waste days, slow onboarding, and derail CI pipelines with “works on my machine” issues. While enterprise software solved this years ago with containerization, many embedded teams are still stuck replicating fragile environments. Containers offer a proven fix: a portable, reproducible build environment that works identically on laptops and CI servers. No brittle scripts, mismatched versions, or wasted time—just code that builds. IAR has gone further by delivering pre-built, performance-tuned Docker images for Arm, RISC-V, and Renesas architectures, ready for GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines. For regulated industries, containers simplify audits and compliance by enabling validation once and reuse everywhere. The result: faster onboarding, consistent builds, and stronger safety assurance. Containers aren’t a luxury—they’re the cheat code embedded teams need to modernize DevOps and compete effectively.
The Embedded Systems Summit - Risk Free Early Bird
The inaugural Embedded Systems Summit runs October 14-16, 2025 in Silicon Valley, limited to just 70 seats to keep things intentionally intimate. Day one is a full-day Zephyr Bootcamp, followed by two days of talks and workshops focused on real-world embedded challenges. Early Bird registration comes with a flexible cancellation policy to reduce risk and help you secure discounted hotel space. Lock your seat before the Early Bird window closes.
The Embedded Systems Summit 2025 - Registration are now open!
Registration is open for the inaugural Embedded Systems Summit 2025, happening October 14–16 at the Sonesta Silicon Valley. Stephane Boucher and Jacob Beningo put together a small, in-person event focused on hands-on Zephyr training and compact conference sessions to boost embedded careers. Expect a full-day Zephyr Developer Bootcamp, two days of technical talks on RTOS, tooling, and testing, and only 70 seats with an early-bird discount.
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.
VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design
Complex VHDL files quickly become hard to read and maintain. This tutorial demonstrates how to break a design into reusable entities by building a divide-by-10 component, explaining ports, sensitivity lists, and the inout usage for a toggled output. It then shows how to instantiate and chain three instances into a ÷1000 divider, with synthesis notes from compiling to an XC2C128 device.
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 1 - Hardware
Gene Breniman walks through a practical CPLD-based data acquisition engine built for a low-power handheld instrument, focusing on hardware choices, signal flow, and pin assignments. The article explains component selection including a PCM1870 ADC, CY14B101Q2 serial nvSRAM, and an XC2C64A CPLD, and shows how the CPLD acts as an SPI sequencer and I2S clock master while minimizing microcontroller pins and power draw.
Chebyshev Approximation and How It Can Help You Save Money, Win Friends, and Influence People
Are expensive math libraries or huge lookup tables eating CPU and flash on your microcontroller? In this practical guide Jason Sachs shows how Chebyshev polynomial approximation (with range reduction, splitting, and small interpolated tables) can give near-minimax accuracy while using far less code and runtime. The post compares Taylor series, plain and interpolated tables, and explains how to fit empirical sensor data and evaluate coefficients efficiently.
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 2 - VHDL coding
Gene Breniman walks through the VHDL coding for a CPLD-based data acquisition engine, turning the hardware spec into a working state machine and signal generators. The article explains SPI and I2S timing choices, an internal SPI peripheral latch, and counter-based timing (seqCount and CycleCnt) used to create LRCK, BCK, SPI SCK and nvSRAM write control. It’s a practical, implementation-focused guide for embedded designers.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Beginnings
Mike Silva's beginner tutorial series walks through core microcontroller concepts and practical steps to get started, from wiring an LED blinky to understanding startup code. He compares embedded and desktop programming, explains why C and assembly matter, and introduces AVR and STM32 Cortex-M3 toolchains and hardware. Expect clear examples, no-nonsense tool advice, and the essential hardware knowledge to move from simulator to a real board.
Ten Little Algorithms, Part 8: Miller-Rabin Primality Test (and Living with Uncertainty)
Part 8 of the Ten Little Algorithms series: A look at the Miller-Rabin primality test, along with Pollard's rho algorithm for factoring, and some perspectives on very low levels of uncertainty.
VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench
In this follow-up Gene Breniman builds a VHDL testbench in Xilinx ISE, showing how to generate a continuous master clock, apply a power-on reset, and sequence register strobes to change clock divisors. He walks through timing waits and observation delays needed to verify ADC clock rates. The article also shows how simulation exposed a copy-paste bug in the original design.
Supply Chain Games: What Have We Learned From the Great Semiconductor Shortage of 2021? (Part 5)
Most of the time a wafer spends in a fab is spent waiting in queues, not being processed. Jason Sachs peels back why cycle times stretch weeks to months, covering WIP accounting, die and wafer banks, the days per mask layer metric, and how variability and utilization tradeoffs turned fab behavior into a major factor in the 2021 chip shortage.
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 3 - VHDL testbench
Gene Breniman walks a complete VHDL testbench workflow for a CPLD-based data acquisition engine, from Xilinx ISE testbench generation to stimulus processes. He shows clock and SPI gating, a simulated ADC data generator tied to ADC_LRCK and ADC_BCK, and how simulation revealed a timing bug in the nvSRAM header that was then fixed in the VHDL. Practical and hands-on for verification work.
How to Read a Power MOSFET Datasheet
Jason Sachs takes a soapbox to stop a recurring mistake: misreading power MOSFET datasheets. This practical guide separates marketing blurbs and typical graphs from the specifications you can actually rely on, and explains how to use RDS(on), VGS, gate charge, SOA and thermal data in real designs. Read this before you pick a MOSFET or size a gate driver.
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part I: Idempotence
Idempotence is a simple design principle that prevents duplicate effects when operations are retried or repeated. Jason Sachs shows why it matters in embedded systems, from HTTP submit buttons and capacitive touch inputs to garage-door remotes and SPI DAC writes. Read this post to learn three practical idempotent techniques and when redundant writes are a sensible reliability trade-off.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Driving WS2812 RGB LEDs
Mike Silva walks through a practical, cycle-counted AVR assembly implementation to bit-bang WS2812B RGB LEDs from an 8MHz AVR, hitting the chip's tight 1.25µs-per-bit timing. The post breaks down the WS2812B self-clocked protocol and GRB byte order, explains register and calling-convention choices, and includes a complete C example plus power-consumption warnings for driving LED strips.
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Interrupts
Interrupts are not magic, they are the practical tool that lets a microcontroller respond in microseconds while still doing background work. This introduction explains what an interrupt and an ISR are, how return addresses and CPU state are saved, and why ISRs must be short and carefully written. AVR and STM32 external-interrupt examples show real configuration steps and key gotchas to watch for.
StrangeCPU #1. A new CPU
This post rethinks call instructions by factoring call targets out of every callsite and replacing them with tiny tokens. Victor Yurkovsky introduces StrangeCPU, a bytecode CPU that uses 8-bit tokens plus a static sliding-window token table to give byte-long calls full 32-bit reach while dramatically reducing code size. The article includes rationale, tradeoffs, a simple proof-of-concept x86 interpreter, and the basic lookup equation for hardware implementation.
Development of the MOS Technology 6502: A Historical Perspective
A tiny team at MOS Technology pulled off one of the most influential microprocessor wins of the 1970s, creating the 6502 by marrying clever circuit choices with pragmatic manufacturing techniques. This excerpt by Jason Sachs focuses on the NMOS depletion-load process, mask and layout workflows, and yield-improving tricks like Micralign projection lithography and spot-knocking, showing how engineering and process decisions made a low-cost CPU ubiquitous.
VHDL tutorial
Gene Breniman presents a hands-on VHDL walkthrough for a programmable clock divider implemented on a Xilinx CoolRunner CPLD (XC2C32A). The example shows how to declare ports and internal signals, implement a clock-division process with reset and falling-edge detection, and create a simple addressable latch to select clock rates from a 40MHz master clock. It’s a compact, practical guide for embedded engineers learning VHDL and CPLD design.
Supply Chain Games: What Have We Learned From the Great Semiconductor Shortage of 2021? (Part 2)
Jason Sachs zooms through semiconductor history, fab economics, and the microcomputer era to explain why the 2021 chip shortage unfolded the way it did. He blends technical explainers on photolithography, yields, and node migration with business lessons about risky multi-year fab investments and cyclic demand. Engineers get historical case studies and practical signals to watch when designing products for greater supply resilience.
MSP430 LaunchPad Tutorial - Part 3 - ADC
Enrico Garante walks through practical ADC use on the MSP430G2231, from a single-channel read that toggles LaunchPad LEDs to multi-channel repeated conversions. The post includes complete code, an ADC10 interrupt example to wake from low-power mode, and a DTC-backed array transfer so you can collect samples without polling. A short CCS debugging tip shows how to watch ADC variables while running.
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.
Analog-to-Digital Confusion: Pitfalls of Driving an ADC
Wayne's thermistor board showed one ADC channel changing when another was heated, a classic case of ADC input cross-coupling. The post walks through how multiplexed ADCs, the small sample-and-hold capacitor, source impedance, sampling time, repeated sampling rates, and added charge reservoirs interact to create errors. Learn practical fixes including increasing sample time, sizing external caps, adding op-amp buffers, and using an RC dampener with PCB layout tips.
Announcing the 2021 Embedded Online Conference!
Big names, hands-on workshops, and a generous promo code make the 2021 Embedded Online Conference worth registering for. Stephane Boucher and Jacob Beningo announced Jack Ganssle will deliver the keynote on the 50th anniversary of the microprocessor, with TDD and RTOS workshops taught by James Grenning and Jacob Beningo. Register this week to get access to 2020 on-demand talks and use promo code ER90 to save more than 50% on registration.
The DSP Online Conference - Right Around the Corner!
Three months after a forum post, Stephane Boucher and Jacob Beningo pulled together the DSP Online Conference, a two-day virtual event featuring 14 talks from leading DSP experts. Most sessions are 30 to 60 minutes with a 30-minute Zoom Q&A, while extended deep dives from speakers like fred harris are included. Registered attendees get one-year on-demand access, and free or reduced passes are available.
Already 3000+ Attendees Registered for the Upcoming Embedded Online Conference
More than 3,000 engineers have already signed up for the Embedded Online Conference, and free registration closes at the end of February. Stephane Boucher highlights four practical tracks—DSP and machine learning, FPGA, embedded systems programming, and embedded systems security—and notes that every talk will be available to stream on demand from May 20. If you prefer no-travel learning or want flexible access to world-class talks, register now.
Free Goodies from Embedded World - Full Inventory and Upcoming Draw Live-Streaming Date
Stephane came back from Embedded World with a massive haul of development kits, tools and swag and decided to give it away to multiple winners. Read the full inventory, learn how to enter by liking or sharing the LinkedIn and Twitter posts, and tune in Friday March 29 at 1pm EST on EmbeddedRelated.tv for the live draw where winners will pick their prizes.
Free Goodies from Embedded World - What to Do Next?
Stephane Boucher went on a hunt for free stuff at Embedded World to assemble a giveaway bundle for a lucky reader. This short update shares that haul and asks the embedded community for ideas on what to do next. It is a conversational call for suggestions, aiming to turn conference swag into a useful prize.
Back from Embedded World 2019 - Funny Stories and Live-Streaming Woes
Stephane Boucher tried live-streaming multiple talks from Embedded World 2019 and turned a chaotic experiment into a useful set of lessons for embedded engineers. Between broken tripods, flaky venue WiFi, tricky German SIM purchases, and audio nightmares, he learned practical fixes for reliable streams and better video quality. Read this if you want candid, tactical advice on streaming hardware, connectivity, and on-site troubleshooting.
Spread the Word and Run a Chance to Win a Bundle of Goodies from Embedded World
EmbeddedRelated is turning Embedded World into a live-streaming experiment, and the more engineers help spread the word, the better the coverage could get. Stephane Boucher is asking readers to follow updates on Twitter and LinkedIn, where every like, share, or repost adds another chance to win a box of vendor goodies. The prize mix includes t-shirts, dev kits, gadgets, and plenty of pens.
Launch of EmbeddedRelated.tv
Stephane Boucher launches EmbeddedRelated.tv to host live broadcasts from Embedded World, starting next week. The site will show a constantly evolving schedule, a Live! tab to find ongoing streams, and ad-hoc demos added from the show floor. Expect schedule conflicts and small hiccups, and plan to refresh the page and join the forum thread for real-time updates and feedback.
Live Streaming from Embedded World!
Stephane Boucher will bring Embedded World to engineers who cannot attend, streaming high-quality HD video from the show floor. He plans to use a professional camera and a device that bonds three internet links to keep the stream stable, and he is coordinating live sessions with vendors and select talks. Read on to learn how to vote for the presentations you want streamed.
What to See at Embedded World 2019
Skip the overwhelm at Embedded World 2019, Stephane Boucher lays out a practical preview of what to see and how to prioritize your time. The post helps embedded engineers focus on demos, vendor booths, and sessions that matter without getting lost on the show floor. Read it to plan a short, efficient visit that maximizes technical takeaways and networking opportunities.
