My adapter boards have arrived! As we discussed in the first two parts, the on-board debugger that comes with most development boards is functional but often offers far less than a professional debugger. We’ve been exploring how we can create an adapter board for the ST Microelectronic development boards that will allow us to use … Continue reading Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards (Part 3)
Category: Design Cycle
Understanding firmware total ownership development costs
Innovation can be an exciting endeavor and on occasion management and developer decisions will optimistically estimate the cost implications for the project. The optimism can sometimes come from a short-sightedness or knowledge gap in understanding what is involved in the total cost of ownership for developing embedded software. Let’s look at the five major cost … Continue reading Understanding firmware total ownership development costs
The Firmware Conundrum: Build or Buy
Every development team needs to make the decision as to whether they will design and build their software from scratch or buy software components. In many instances, the decision is not driven so much by a business decision as it is by engineer ego shouting, “I can do it faster and better than they can!”. … Continue reading The Firmware Conundrum: Build or Buy
Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards (Part 2)
In the last post, we started to look at how we could design a simple programming adapter for STM32 development boards. We walked through the process necessary to get the schematics completed. In this post, we will examine the the PCB layout along with the BOM and costs necessary to prototype this simple board. With … Continue reading Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards (Part 2)
Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards (Part 1)
Nearly every development board comes with a built-in programing tool. Depending on the vendor, it may be PE Micro, SEGGER J-Link OB or even the vendor’s own tool such as an ST-Link. In most cases, the on-board programmer is rather limited in its capabilities and it makes a lot of sense to use an external … Continue reading Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards (Part 1)
Tools – Real-time Application Visualization Using Tracealyzer 4.2
It has often been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to debugging embedded software, a picture is worth a hundred thousand lines of code. For most of my career, I’ve always felt apprehensive about running code on a target and verifying a few external features to say that the … Continue reading Tools – Real-time Application Visualization Using Tracealyzer 4.2
3 Ways to Perform a Worst-Case Stack Analysis
Figuring out how to size the stack for an embedded application and the tasks within it can be challenging. In many cases, developers will pick a value that they feel should be enough. These estimates are sometimes a little short, most of the time a gross estimation and rarely spot on. While I always encourage … Continue reading 3 Ways to Perform a Worst-Case Stack Analysis
Know thy compiler toolchain
An embedded systems engineer is only as good as their knowledge of the tools they use. Using the right tool for the job can drastically speed up development but doesn’t necessarily ensure success. The developer needs to understand the intricacies of the tool in order to be successful. Take for example an apparently simple task … Continue reading Know thy compiler toolchain
5 Dangerous Assumptions Embedded Software Engineers Make
Whether we like it or not, we all make assumptions that form the foundation on how we think about and design embedded systems. In many cases, the assumptions we make are trivial and will have a minor impact on the systems we design or the companies that we work for. Sometimes though, the assumptions that … Continue reading 5 Dangerous Assumptions Embedded Software Engineers Make
5 Trends from Embedded World 2018
Last week, I attended the 2018 Embedded World conference in Nuremberg Germany (February 27 – March 1). As usual, companies from around the world descended on Nuremberg to show off their latest and greatest embedded technologies. While I was there giving several talks, networking with colleagues and walking the conference floor, I started to see … Continue reading 5 Trends from Embedded World 2018