Security, just like quality and many other embedded system attributes must be considered at the start of the development cycle. Developers can’t build their system and then add security at the end. With more and more systems starting to connect to the internet, there are more than a dozen best practices that developers should follow … Continue reading 7 Tips for Securing an Embedded System
In “5 Embedded System Characteristics Every Engineer Should Monitor”, I discussed key embedded system characteristics that in many cases require optimization. These characteristics include system timing, code size, RAM usage and energy consumption. Optimizing each characteristic typically requires different methods and techniques but there are several general tips developers can follow to optimize their embedded … Continue reading 7 Tips for Optimizing Embedded Software
In the article, “Transitioning to a Modern Day Engineering Notebook“, I discussed the basic features and capabilities a modern electronic notebook would need to meet the requirements of the average engineer. In order to get the most out of an engineering notebook, here are ten tips engineers should consider. Tip #1 – Keep a notebook … Continue reading Tools – 10 Engineering Notebook Best Practices
Engineers and scientists have always relied upon notebooks to document their ideas, inventions, progress and even their missteps. Some of the most notable engineers and scientists who used notebooks include Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, mankind would know very little of da Vinci’s discoveries had he not written them down … Continue reading Transitioning to a Modern Day Engineering Notebook
The way developers select a microcontroller for their embedded systems is dramatically changing. Traditionally developers have focused on the hardware first and thought about the software second. Selecting a microcontroller in this manner, will result in failure today. There are several new steps that developers need to follow if they are going to be successful … Continue reading Tips and Tricks – 10 Steps for Selecting a Microcontroller (2017)
Object-oriented programming has become a very popular and critical programming methodology for developing applications. While traditional embedded software development has mostly been developed using the procedural language C, C++ and other object oriented languages are slowly started to gain traction in real-time systems. In order to ensure that a C++ based applications doesn’t bloat code … Continue reading Tips and Tricks – 5 Tips for Developing Real-time C++ Applications
Bootloaders are included in nearly every embedded system and provide a great way to update application code in the field without having to access a programming port. As important as bootloaders are, developers often get tripped up trying to jump from the bootloader into their application code. The jump needs to be clean but there … Continue reading Tips and Tricks – Jumping from the Bootloader to the Application Code Cleanly
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
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
There is nothing worse than purchasing a product that occasionally flakes out, freezes up, is slow to respond or has other issues. For developers, there is nothing worse than trying to maintain and update code that is so poor in quality that they are constantly chasing their own tail. For many development teams, software code … Continue reading Tips and Tricks – 7 Tips to Improve Embedded Software Code Quality
