My favorite line from the Matrix is that “there is no spoon”, and today that is a wise statement for embedded software developers to take to heart. Embedded software developers traditionally are hardware centric, believing that they can’t move forward without the hardware (sometimes this is true). Much like Neo, developers need to accept that … Continue reading There is No Hardware
Category: Design Cycle
Tips, Tricks and Best Practices, so What’s the Deal?
The advancements in chip, sensor and wireless technologies over the past decade have resulted in exponential increases in system complexity that create unique challenges for development teams. While systems today are more feature rich, teams struggle to deliver quality solutions that easily scale, can be delivered on-time and within budget. This is where tips, tricks … Continue reading Tips, Tricks and Best Practices, so What’s the Deal?
3 Tips for Delivering Software Projects On-Time Every Time
Delivering embedded systems on-time is a struggle for many developers and teams. From time-to-time, I’ve struggled with delivering on-time as well. I think it’s part of the human condition or at least the software developers’ condition. After some consideration, I’ve realized that there are generally 3 tips that can be followed to improve the chances … Continue reading 3 Tips for Delivering Software Projects On-Time Every Time
A Simple, Scalable RTOS Initialization Design Pattern
I often find that developers initialize task code in seemingly random places throughout their application. This can make it difficult to make changes to the tasks, but more importantly just difficult to understand what all is happening in the application. It also makes it so that the application is not very scalable or easy to … Continue reading A Simple, Scalable RTOS Initialization Design Pattern
3 Strategies for Handling Errors in Embedded Software
It’s very tempting to assume that a system is going to behave as perfectly in the field as it does on the engineering bench. During development, embedded software is written under the best of conditions. The developer knows, or at least has their own concept of, how the system is supposed to work. Things usually … Continue reading 3 Strategies for Handling Errors in Embedded Software
Announcing the 2021 Embedded Online Conference
It’s official! The 4th annual Embedded Online Conference is on the calendar for May 18 – 20, 2021. Once again this year, Stephane Boucher and I are joining forces to bring the embedded system industry a top notch event from industry experts around the world! For this year’s edition, we are delighted to announce that … Continue reading Announcing the 2021 Embedded Online Conference
3 Tips for Writing External Device Drivers
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
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
3 Engineering Resolutions to Kick-off 2021
The start of a new year is the perfect time to take a few moments and examine what worked and what did not work last year. I often find that development teams spend most of their time scrambling to meet deadlines and crank out product features. In general, I’ve found that across industries and dramatically … Continue reading 3 Engineering Resolutions to Kick-off 2021