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
Category: Design Cycle
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
5 Skills Every Developer Needs in 2021
The end of the year is always a favorite time of mine. Yes, I enjoy the Christmas lights, egg nog and the general holiday cheer, but I also enjoy the opportunity to strategize about the upcoming year. The end of the year is a great time to look at what went right and wrong this … Continue reading 5 Skills Every Developer Needs in 2021
5 Best Practices for Over-the-Air (OTA) Updates
In my last post, I explored how OTA updates are typically performed using Amazon Web Services and FreeRTOS. OTA updates are critically important to developers with connected devices. In today’s post, we are going to explore several best practices developers should keep in mind with implementing their OTA solution. Most of these will be generic … Continue reading 5 Best Practices for Over-the-Air (OTA) Updates
Over-the-Air (OTA) Updates with AWS and FreeRTOS
Updating firmware in the field has always been a critical component to nearly every embedded system since the dawn of embedded systems. Access to programming tools like a JTAG or SWD programmer and physical access to the programming port has often necessitated the need to update firmware using an alternative interface such as USB, CAN, … Continue reading Over-the-Air (OTA) Updates with AWS and FreeRTOS