Over the last several years, Raspberry Pi’s have proliferated into all sorts of applications. As a microcontroller-focused embedded software consultant, I’ve always found them fun and interesting, but not exactly my cup of tea. However, in January 2021, the Raspberry Pi Pico was released which at its heart has an RP2040 dual-core microcontroller based on … Continue reading 5 Tips for Rapid Prototyping with the Raspberry Pi Pico
Month: March 2022
The Ternary Operator Revisited
Several years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled Ternary Operator vs. if/else, which was supposed to be an interesting comparison between the two, except that I totally botched it! The premise is that the ternary operator and if/else statements should compile into identical, so why not just use if/else statements to make the code … Continue reading The Ternary Operator Revisited
5 C++ Tricks for C Programmers
Over the past several years, C++ has become a more popular language to use in embedded systems than C. Don’t get me wrong, C will continue to be a dominant language for years to come, but C++ offers developers modern tools to leverage when designing more reusable, scalable, and portable code. Teams aren’t just abandoning … Continue reading 5 C++ Tricks for C Programmers
Solutions to the 7 Silent Project Killers
Several years ago, I wrote an article entitled “The 7 Silent Project Killers”. Over the years, I’ve had several people comment, email, and request that I also provide potential solutions. I’ve generally, tongue in cheek, commented that I save those for my clients. However, in today’s post, we’ll explore a few potential solutions to several … Continue reading Solutions to the 7 Silent Project Killers
3 Strategies for Embedded Software Error Handling
Embedded software error handling is something that teams often struggle with. It’s very tempting to assume that a system will behave as perfectly in the field as it does on the engineering bench. However, embedded software is written under the best of conditions during development. The developer knows their own concept of how the system … Continue reading 3 Strategies for Embedded Software Error Handling