Callback functions are an essential and often critical concept that developers need to create drivers or custom libraries. A callback function is a reference to executable code that is passed as an argument to other code that allows a lower-level software layer to call a function defined in a higher-level layer(10). A callback allows a … Continue reading Embedded Basics – Callback Functions
One of the top complaints about electronic devices in our modern, mobile society is that their batteries don’t last as long as expected. Human beings have to some degree become addicted to our ability to always be connected and streaming data of one form or another. The increased use of mobile devices has resulted in … Continue reading 7 Tricks for Estimating Battery Life
Course Overview: The IoT edge devices have embedded written all over them. Sensor nodes that acquire data and transmit them to the cloud is quickly becoming common place. In this series, Jacob Beningo will walk attendees through the steps and processes necessary to create a sensor node using an ESP8266 which is an integrated microcontroller … Continue reading CEC – Designing IoT Sensor Nodes using the ESP8266
Best practices and industry standards develop and evolve over time but they represent a snap shot of guiding wisdom. Best practices can be slow to evolve and often become entrenched despite technological advances that void the previously known best practice. The use of C language features within the embedded systems space has suffered the same … Continue reading 5 Forbidden C Features that just might not be
Every embedded software developer should be using a revision control system. I cannot even begin to quantify how much time I’ve saved using such systems through-out my career. When something has broken, and cannot be undone, the ability to roll back to the previous version is a life saver. Even as developers recognize and use … Continue reading 5 Revision Control Best Practices
Blasphemy! Open source software is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the industry! It’s free! Why on Earth would we ever want to avoid open source software? This may surprise some readers but despite our love for “open source” and “free software”, there are several reasons that developers should consider that justify avoiding … Continue reading 7 Reasons to Avoid Open Source Software
Every industry has their best practices and their sinful practices. The cardinal sins are the practices that many are aware of but that are just too tempting or too easy to fall into. The embedded software industry has a number of these cardinal sins but there are seven in particular that seem to have pervaded … Continue reading Tips and Tricks – 7 Cardinal Sins of Embedded Software Development
Embedded software development teams have a unique challenge before them; how to develop more and more firmware in shorter and shorter timeframes. How can developers get everything on their plate completed within the time allotted? Here are seven tips as food for thought. Tip #1 – Continuously Innovate Focus cannot simply be on creating code … Continue reading 7 Tips to Accelerate Firmware Development
When I’m teaching “C Programming for Embedded Systems”, I’m often asked whether the ternary operator should be used or an if/else statement. Hidden behind the question is really the need to know whether the ternary operator is more efficient than if/else. One might think that compilers today would generate identical code. Let’s take a quick … Continue reading Ternary Operator versus the if/else statement …
Using open source and free software seems to be engrained in the DNA of software developers. Given a choice to pay or build a developer will usually choose build. When it comes to compilers, building their own compiler would take far too long and be very error prone so developers choose open source tools such … Continue reading Open Source versus Commercial Compilers
