A major advantage to using a microcontroller today is that embedded software developers typically don’t have to write their own drivers anymore. It’s very common for the microcontroller vendor to provide software frameworks that abstract the hardware and allow developers to make simple function calls to initialize, read and write to peripherals such as SPI, … Continue reading 3 Tips for Writing External Device Drivers
Month: January 2021
5 Tips for Adding an Audio Codec to an Embedded System
The ability for an embedded system to play audio is becoming a fairly common feature. Audio provides great feedback to a user, but with so much high-fidelity audio available today, using beeps and chirps just no longer cuts it. Developers can certainly get decent audio out of a system using discrete components and a DAC, … Continue reading 5 Tips for Adding an Audio Codec to an Embedded System
Simulating Your Way to Embedded Software Success
As an embedded software engineer, it’s really easy to think that all the software for the product is reliant upon the hardware. Most embedded developers that I encounter want to get a development board right out of the gate and start writing software, including myself most of the time. It’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just … Continue reading Simulating Your Way to Embedded Software Success
Jacob’s Most Popular Blogs (circa 2021)
I thought it would be interesting to kick-off the year with a look at some of the most popular blogs on my website ( does not include DesignNews or other sites I blog for) that predate 2021. Obviously, the older content will have more views so it’s a light look at the past, but giving … Continue reading Jacob’s Most Popular Blogs (circa 2021)