Using a HAL is a great way to develop software that can be easily reused and ported from one application and platform to the next. Why would a developer want to do such a thing? For starters, reinventing the wheel over and over again gets pretty boring. I believe most developers want to be working … Continue reading The Hardware Abstraction Layer Design Process
Category: Design Cycle
Defining the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
Consistently developing a quality embedded system within budgetary and timing constraints is a challenging endeavor for many teams. The reasons can be quite varied but from my conversations with clients and teams all around the world from start-ups to huge semiconductor companies, an immature Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is one of the leading culprits. … Continue reading Defining the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
The 3 Transformative Technologies in Food Services Automation
From the Blackberry’s release in 1998, to the iPhone in 2007, to the vast array of connected and powerful home and personal devices we have today, the past two decades have seen an incredible leap in our ability to communicate, control, and interact with our world as consumers. Indeed, it is these transformative technologies of … Continue reading The 3 Transformative Technologies in Food Services Automation
10 Tricks for Documenting Embedded Software
There are few things more challenging in software development than acquiring a code base with little to no documentation and being required to maintain it. Documentation doesn’t just tell an engineer what a particular function or variable does but it also demonstrates and conveys why the software was implemented in a particular fashion. There are … Continue reading 10 Tricks for Documenting Embedded Software
The 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Embedded Software Developers in IoT
Developing embedded software is not as “simple” as it used to be. Creating a stand-alone device was and still often still is challenging for many development teams. In the IoT age where we are starting to connect absolutely everything, including toothbrushes, system complexity is skyrocketing. The traditional, disconnected developer is finding that there are several … Continue reading The 5 Biggest Challenges Facing Embedded Software Developers in IoT
5 Benefits to replacing analog components with DSP software
The IoT is unleashing an unimaginable number of connected devices, many of which are sensor systems that are designed to sense and interact with the world around them. The world around us is analog and analog sensors are often used to provide the sensing mechanism to the microcontroller. Analog circuits are often big, bulky and … Continue reading 5 Benefits to replacing analog components with DSP software
5 Technologies Embedded System Engineers Should Master in 2019
Happy New Year! Another year is here and with it are many opportunities for embedded systems developers. As the new year starts, there are many interesting technologies that are going to be shaping the way systems are designed in 2019 and beyond. Let’s quickly examine the top five technologies that developers should be mastering or … Continue reading 5 Technologies Embedded System Engineers Should Master in 2019
7 Tips for using assertions in C
One of the greatest bug squashing tools available to embedded software developers is the assert macro. Despite the power of assert, I rarely see it implemented and in the cases where it is used the implementation is either flawed or incorrect. The following seven tips should help elucidate not only when and where to use … Continue reading 7 Tips for using assertions in C
The Biggest Embedded Software Issue Is …
There are many different problems and challenges that embedded software developers are facing today. One of the biggest, and least spoken about issues that I have encountered is that developers are writing their software for success. Writing for success sounds great, except that what I mean is that developers are writing their software assuming that … Continue reading The Biggest Embedded Software Issue Is …
5 Tips for maintaining effective design processes
As strange as it sounds, whenever I hear the word process, I cringe. Not because processes are bad, they are absolutely critical, but because so many teams that I encounter either have no process or too much process. They struggle to find the balance. In this post, I’d like to share five tips I have … Continue reading 5 Tips for maintaining effective design processes