The start of a new year, especially one that is the start of a new decade, provides a great excuse to carefully evaluate and review how you develop embedded systems and put in place a plan to improve it. The techniques and processes that are used to effectively develop products are constantly changing and improving, … Continue reading 5 Tips for Improving Embedded Development (in 2020)
Category: Design Cycle
2 Game Changing Trends that will Define Embedded Systems in the 2020’s
The last decade has seen an amazing advancement in embedded system development techniques, tools and technologies. A decade ago, I recall being amazed when a microcontroller had a clock speed above 48 MHz with an unbelievable 128 kilobytes for flash. Today, we now have microcontrollers with clock speeds above 1 GHz with more than 4 … Continue reading 2 Game Changing Trends that will Define Embedded Systems in the 2020’s
5 Tips for Modernizing Legacy Code
It’s always exciting to start on a new development project, but some of the most interesting and challenging projects to work on in embedded systems can often be how to modernize a legacy code base. There are so many products that are currently on the market that have been in production for years if not … Continue reading 5 Tips for Modernizing Legacy Code
5 Tips for using Open Source Software Successfully
In today’s product development environment, developers are looking to open source software to help them solve their design challenges more than ever before. Open source software has the potential to dramatically accelerate development and save costs, but as I often see in industry and with my clients, it can also become a thorn in a … Continue reading 5 Tips for using Open Source Software Successfully
Developing an Embedded Software Build Pipeline
One interesting fact that I’ve noticed about embedded software development is that development processes and techniques tend to lag the general software industry. When I first started to write embedded software back in the late 1990’s, the focus seemed to be on moving away from writing assembly language and adopting C along with the best … Continue reading Developing an Embedded Software Build Pipeline
5 Engineering Lessons from Playing League of Legends
When I first started consulting ten years ago, there was an online, team-oriented video game called League of Legends that I used to play after work or during lunch. The game required some strategy, required implementing that strategy through tactics and also required some well-coordinated button smashing to be effective in team fights. Over the … Continue reading 5 Engineering Lessons from Playing League of Legends
7 Sections Every Company Coding Standard Should Include
Developing a company coding standard is absolutely critical to ensuring that every embedded developer is on the same page. A coding standard tells a developer many of the do’s and don’ts that they need in order to write legible, reviewable software that achieves the businesses desired quality level with the least number of defects possible. … Continue reading 7 Sections Every Company Coding Standard Should Include
2 Techniques to Version Embedded Hardware
When it comes to embedded systems version control, I often immediately jump to thinking about the software. Software changes often and carefully managing those changes are crucial, but so is versioning the hardware. A small hardware change could obsolesce every version of software up to that hardware change. In todays’ post, we are going to … Continue reading 2 Techniques to Version Embedded Hardware
7 Tips for Getting to Market Faster
Everyone is in a hurry these days and embedded system developers are no exception. Development teams are racing as quickly as possible towards a goal or a delivery that isn’t just a moving target but may not exist at all! Fire! Ready, aim goes the mantra but what about teams that have a known goal, … Continue reading 7 Tips for Getting to Market Faster
7 Reasons Open Source Software can be Evil
Through-out my travels, I encounter quite a few development teams that seem to live by the adage, “The best software is free software”. The moment they hear the words “Open Source” the heavens open, the choirs begin singing and all thought about doing due diligence on the open source code is gone. That’s the direction, … Continue reading 7 Reasons Open Source Software can be Evil