C++ on microcontrollers 1 - introduction, and an output pin class
This blog series is about the use of C++ for modern microcontrollers. My plan is to show the gradual development of a basic I/O library. I will introduce the object-oriented C++ features that are used step by step, to provide a...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Buttons and Bouncing
[quicklinks] What Is A Button? To your hardware, that is. As discussed in Introduction to Microcontrollers - More On GPIO, a button (or key, or switch, or any form of mechanical contact) is generally hooked up to a microcontroller...
Important Programming Concepts (Even on Embedded Systems) Part V: State Machines
Other articles in this series: Part I: Idempotence Part II: Immutability Part III: Volatility Part IV: Singletons Part VI: Abstraction Oh, hell, this article just had to be about state machines, didn’t it? State machines! Those...
Endianness and Serial Communication
Endianness is a consideration that is easily overlooked in the design of embedded systems. I myself am amply guilty of this oversight. It’s something you don’t ever have to worry about if you’re only working with a single...
There's a State in This Machine!
An introduction to state machines and their implementation. Working from an intuitive definition of the state machine concept, we will start with a straightforward implementation then we evolve it into a more robust and engineered solution.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XI: Pseudorandom Number Generation
Last time we looked at the use of LFSRs in counters and position encoders. This time we’re going to look at pseudorandom number generation, and why you may — or may not — want to use LFSRs for this purpose. But first —...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - Timers
[quicklinks] Timers - Because "When" Matters Computer programs are odd things, for one reason because they have no concept of time. They may have the concept of sequential execution, but the time between instructions can be...
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part IX: Decimation, Trace Parity, and Cyclotomic Cosets
Embedded Programming Video Course Shows How OOP Works Under the Hood
If you'd like to understand how Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) really works under the hood, here is a free video course for you: OOP part-1: Encapsulation: This first lesson on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) introduces the concept of...
Introduction to Microcontrollers - 7-segment displays & Multiplexing
[quicklinks] Doing the 7 Segment Shuffle The 7 segment display is ubiquitous in the modern world. Just about every digital clock, calculator and movie bomb has one. The treadmills at my gym have 6 or 7, each one displaying 3 or 4...
OS influence on power consumption
Power consumption of an embedded system may be influenced in software in general, but selection of an operating system can be key.
On optimizing manual soldering
When faced with manual soldering of thousands of components, speed and efficiency become pivotal. Here are some takeaways from my own experience attempting to optimize such a process.
On hardware state machines: How to write a simple MAC controller using the RP2040 PIOs
Hardware state machines are nice, and the RP2040 has two blocks with up to four machines each. Their instruction set is limited, but powerful, and they can execute an instruction per cycle, pushing and popping from their FIFOs and shifting bytes in and out. The Raspberry Pi Pico does not have an Ethernet connection, but there are many PHY boards available… take a LAN8720 board and connect it to the Pico; you’re done. The firmware ? Introducing Mongoose…
Graphical medicine
Although an appealing user interface is a good option for any device, in medical applications it can be a life saver.
Pay it Forward
A popular car bumper sticker reads, "If you can read this, thank a teacher!" I might say, "If you can read THIS (article on Embedded Related), then you've been blessed with great experiences and/or great educators or volunteers that got you excited about tech and helped you believe that you had a future in this field!" Why not pay it forward by helping other children have those same great experiences? As we enter another season of giving, I hope you consider doing what you can to support the hundreds or thousands of non-profit organizations, educators, and volunteers around the world who are getting kids excited about tech the same way YOU got excited about tech. In this article, I'll share with you a handful of organizations that I know of or donate to that have this mission. How do you like to give back?
Zephyr: West Manifest For Application Development
In this blog post, I show a simpler way to create custom West manifest files. This technique eliminates the need to duplicate the complex West manifest from upstream Zephyr. I also show how we can use the West manifest to include out-of-tree board and SoC definitions, and include our own out-of-tree drivers.
Simulating Your Embedded Project on Your Computer (Part 2)
Having a simulation of your embedded project is like having a superpower that improves the quality and pace of your development ten times over! To be useful, though, it can't take longer to develop the simulation than it takes to develop the application code and for many simulation techniques "the juice isn't worth the squeeze"! In the last article, I showed you how to use the terminal (i.e. printf/getchar) to easily make a completely functional simulation. In this article, we'll take simulation to the next level, either in terms of realism (by using virtual hardware) or in terms of user experience (by using a GUI to simulate our hardware, instead of using the terminal).
Cutting Through the Confusion with ARM Cortex-M Interrupt Priorities
The insanely popular ARM Cortex-M processor offers very versatile interrupt priority management, but unfortunately, the multiple priority numbering conventions used in managing the interrupt priorities are often counter-intuitive, inconsistent,...
Ten Little Algorithms, Part 2: The Single-Pole Low-Pass Filter
Other articles in this series: Part 1: Russian Peasant Multiplication I’m writing this article in a room with a bunch of other people talking, and while sometimes I wish they would just SHUT UP, it would be better if I could just...
VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench
[quicklinks]In an earlier article I walked through the VHDL coding of a simple design. In this article I will continue the process and create a test bench module to test the earlier design. The Xilinx ISE environment makes it pretty easy to start...
Thermistor signal conditioning: Dos and Don'ts, Tips and Tricks
In an earlier blog entry, I mentioned this circuit for thermistor signal conditioning: It is worth a little more explanation on thermistor signal conditioning; it's something that's often done poorly, whereas it's among the easiest...
Quickfire Heuristics: A Fast Usability Evaluation Framework for Lean Hardware Teams
That device with the single LED that requires you to count blink patterns just to understand system status. The button you must hold for 8 seconds, which also performs four other actions depending on hold duration. These are not accidents of negligence; they are the predictable output of development processes that have no rigorous usability evaluation component. Usability tends to slip through the gaps of standard engineering reviews, surfacing late, when design flexibility is already gone. This article introduces a framework that adapts Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics, for hardware and embedded systems, translating each principle into concrete evaluation questions for physical interfaces, firmware state machines, constrained displays, and cross-layer interactions. Using a smartwatch as the running example, it also introduces a structured session format, maps the framework to key lifecycle stages, and extends it to manufacturing, test, and field service contexts.
Linear Feedback Shift Registers for the Uninitiated, Part XVIII: Primitive Polynomial Generation
What does it mean to be 'Turing complete'?
The term "Turing complete" describes all computers and even some things we don't expect to be as powerful as a typical computer. In this article, I describe what it means and discuss the implications of Turing completeness on projects that need just a little more power, on alternative processor designs, and even security.
Embedded Programming Video Course Shows How OOP Works Under the Hood
If you'd like to understand how Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) really works under the hood, here is a free video course for you: OOP part-1: Encapsulation: This first lesson on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) introduces the concept of...
Your Career Archive
Clive Maxfield and Adam Taylor recently published a series of blog posts about how to get and keep an engineering job, discussing preparation in high school through early career stages. I've just started a new job, and wanted to add...
How to Build a Fixed-Point PI Controller That Just Works: Part I
This two-part article explains five tips to make a fixed-point PI controller work well. I am not going to talk about loop tuning -- there are hundreds of articles and books about that; any control-systems course will go over loop tuning enough to...
