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Amazon FreeRTOS, effective design processes, Arm Techcon, SWD and more!

November 2018

Dear *|FNAME|*,

Fall is officially here and with it our industry seems to be really humming! There is so much going on between now and the end of the year that it’s very exciting! First, the free Embedded Online Fall Conference will be happening on November 28th! To see the available sessions, please see the events section:

Embedded Online Fall Conference Schedule

Second, I’ve put together an incredible offer for my newsletter subscribers to learn about embedded security in 2019 for less than $1 a week! This is being done through my Armv8-M TrustZone Technology Primer. To learn more and sign-up, please see the link below:

Armv8-M TrustZone Technology Primer

Finally, this month, I have pulled together several articles that I think will benefit developers and provide some new insights into a variety of embedded software techniques! This months articles include:

Happy Coding,

Jacob

[email protected]

Jacob’s Blog

7 Tips for getting started with Amazon FreeRTOS

Nearly every company at this moment is rushing to connect their products to the internet. The IoT has become the modern-day gold rush only the gold is data. Companies are discovering that by connecting their devices, they aren’t only able to change to a subscription-based business model but can innovate their products in ways they …

5 Tips for maintaining effective design processes

As strange as it sounds, whenever I hear the word process, I cringe. Not because processes are bad, they are absolutely critical, but because so many teams that I encounter either have no process or too much process. They struggle to find the balance. In this post, I’d like to share five tips I have …

5 Key Take-A-Way from Arm TechCon 2018

Now that Arm TechCon has come to a close, I’ve had the opportunity to think back on the conference on the major themes that I saw through-out the talks and show floor. The conference once again appeared to be growing and the keynote talks were all standing room as can be seen in the image …

Creating an SWD adapter for STM32 development boards (Part 3)

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 …

PCB Shops for rapid prototyping

I recently complete my series on “Creating an SWD Adapter for STM32 Development Boards” which you can find links to below: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 While the prototype turned out great, I could have decreased my prototyping costs if I had spent the time to do a little more research on board houses. …

Upcoming Events

DesignNews CEC – Securing IoT Devices using Arm TrustZone

November 26 – 30
5 Sessions
30 minutes each

One of the greatest challenges facing developers creating connected systems is securing their devices. In the good old disconnected days, developers only had to concern themselves with physical tampering but today, systems are also vulnerable to remote attacks that can result in device cloning, repurposing, intellectual property theft, data manipulation and many other potential issues. In this course, we will examine how developers can start to secure their embedded systems using arm TrustZone for microcontrollers.

Session 1 – Understanding Embedded System Security
Session 2 – Introduction to Arm TrustZone
Session 3 – Creating your first TrustZone Application
Session 4 – Designing and debugging a secure boot solution
Session 5 – Securing a RTOS application with TrustZone

Embedded Online Fall Conference

Session 1 – Accelerating Software Development using STM32CubeMX

Embedded developers need to quickly identify the MCU that best meets their requirements selecting for core architecture, peripherals, memory size and performance. With so many STM32 variations to choose from, developers need a tool that can quickly configure their initial projects as well as reuse code that can migrate easily to other STM32 based designs. The STM32CubeMX provides a graphical based tool to assist in microcontroller selection, configuration of GPIO pins, internal clock configuration, peripheral initialization and middleware selection. It includes a power simulator to help with initial power estimates for low power applications. In this session, we will walk you through the key features so you can learn how to use the STM32CubeMX to rapidly select, configure, and generate ‘C’ initialization code for your next STM32 based project.

European Session: Register Here
North American Session: Register Here

Speaker Information:

Wai Chin is an Application Engineer for microcontrollers in STMicroelectronics’ Americas Central Sales organization and has held this position since 2000.

Chin began his career as a Software Engineer with Bally Gaming in Las Vegas in 1996. In 1998, he moved to Bell + Howell to work on high-speed document scanners as an Embedded Engineer. Chin joined ST and the Microcontroller Group at the end of 2000, where he supported the ST 8-bit MCU families in industrial applications. As ST’s microcontroller families have evolved over the years to the STM32 Cortex-M and STM8 8-bit families, Chin has taken on these responsibilities, too.

Wai Chin was born in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Session 2 – Getting Started with Machine Vision on the Arm Cortex-M

The need for machine vision at the edge is quickly becoming essential as edge devices need to be able to perform object recognition and respond to the object. Developing a vision algorithm can be complicated but there are several solutions that developers can leverage. In this webinar, we will explore machine vision and how developers can leverage cloud-based services such as Google’s Vision API to quickly and efficiently get an embedded system to recognize objects.

The webinar will provide hands-on demonstrations using a STM32F779I-EVAL using Express Logic’s X-Ware IoT platform to connect to the cloud and detect text and faces in images.

Topics Covered in this Webinar Include:

An overview of machine vision
Techniques for connecting an embedded system to the cloud
Introduction to Google Cloud Services
Several example machine vision applications using the X-Ware IoT Platform
Best practices for machine vision at the edge
Recommendations for going further

European Session: Register Here
North American Session: Register Here

Speaker Information:

Jacob Beningo is an independent consultant and lecturer who specializes in the design of embedded software for resource constrained and low energy mobile devices. He has successfully completed projects across a number of industries including automotive, defense, medical and space. He enjoys developing and teaching real-time and reusable software development techniques using the latest methods and tools. He blogs for DesignNews.com about embedded system design techniques and challenges. Jacob holds Bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, Physics and Mathematics from Central Michigan University and a Master’s degree in Space Systems Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Session 3 – Tracing RTOS Behavior in a Commercial Drone

A commercial drone, just like many modern embedded systems, is a complex software system that uses a RTOS to manage its real-time behavior. The more complex a system is, the more time consuming it can be to debug and understand the system. In this webinar, we will explore how developers can understand and peek under the hood of their RTOS based system using Percepio Tracealyzer. Attendees will learn how to use instrumentation and graphic visualization to better understand how a system is executing.

The webinar will provide hands-on demonstrations using a commercial drone built by the speaker that shows how visualization can be used efficiently.

Topics Covered in this Webinar Include:

An overview of tracing technology
Examining an RTOS trace
Using intervals and state machines to analyze a system
Hands-on tracing with a drone
Best practices for application tracing
Recommendations for going further

European Session: Register Here
North American Session: Register Here

Speaker Information:

Niclas Ludstrum is a FAE at Percepio AB, a Swedish company developing Tracealyzer, software for visualization tools used in development of embedded systems. Niclas has a M Sci in electronics design and have worked as a design engineer. He has worked in the embedded development tools segment for more than 10 years.

Session 4 – Securing the IoT with Arm TrustZone for the Cortex-M

Securing embedded systems has become a critical task for developers. It is nearly impossible to turn on the news and not hear about yet another major security breach. In this session, attendees will become familiar with the design methodologies necessary to secure their embedded systems using the new Arm TrustZone for Cortex-M processors. We will examine important concepts, such as Secure and Non-secure domains, the armv8-M architecture, TrustZone configuration and debugging a secure application.

This session will provide a hands-on demonstration, using Microchips SAM L11, which is the first Cortex-M processor to support TrustZone. We will use Arm Keil MDK to demonstrate how to get TrustZone up and running on both hardware, and also in simulation, using a virtual processor.

Key Takeaways

Introduction to TrustZone
Defining the Secure and Non-secure world
Example use cases to secure an application with TrustZone
How to debug a TrustZone-based application
Best practices for securing an embedded system
Recommendations for next steps

All TimeZones: Register Here

Speaker Information:

Session 5 – Why Do I Care About Functional Safety Certified Tools?
Many embedded applications today require some form of functional safety certification, but your application can benefit from adhering to functional safety processes even if you’re not ultimately seeking a certification. What does functional safety mean? We will cover the different Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) and provide examples of how they fit in the functional safety framework. We will then explain the benefits of using development tools that are FS-certified, specifically how those tools have been more rigorously-tested and how this can speed the path to your application’s certification. We will also explain why it’s difficult for you to use uncertified tools in a functional safety application. Finally, we will also briefly outline what your application needs to do in order to achieve certification.

All TimeZones: Register Here

Speaker Information:

Shawn Prestridge has served as IAR System’s Senior Field Applications Engineer since 2008. Shawn has worked in the software industry since 1993 and prior to joining IAR Systems he held the position of Embedded Hardware/Software Engineer with Texas Instruments as well as doing Embedded Development as the owner of Ministry of Software. Shawn’s research interests are primarily focused in Cryptology and he specializes in Large Number Theory, Quantum Cryptography, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Number Field Sieve Computing and Communication Encryption. Shawn’s degree work includes a BS in Electrical Engineering, a BS in Mathematics, an MS in Electrical Engineering, an MS in Software Engineering and a PhD in Electrical Engineering specializing in Quantum Cryptography, all with Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Technology Primers

Armv8-M TrustZone Technology Primer

In this technology primer, subscribers will get up to speed on how to design embedded systems using the new armv8-M architecture with the TrustZone security extension. This primer will consist of:

52 weekly blogs
12 monthly videos

Video Topics will cover:

Using an FVP to get started with TrustZone (January)
Designing a TrustZone security architecture (February)
Partitioning secure and unsecure memory (March)
Securely booting the MCU (April)
Executing secure functions from user space (May)
Debugging in a secure TrustZone environment part 1 (June)
Debugging in a secure TrustZone environment part 2 (July)
RTOSes in the TrustZone environment (August)
Using the MPU to create a process (September)
Using a secure kernel (October)
Secure firmware updates (November)
Certifying application to PSA standards (December)

To learn more about the weekly blog topics and primer in general, please click the “Learn More and Register Here” button below:

The technology primer starts January 2019!

Save 60% with our early bird special until December 1st ($50 USD).

Embedded System Workshops

Designing IoT Edge Nodes
using Amazon FreeRTOS

RTOSes have become a critical component in IoT devices to manage the devices real-time behavior. Leveraging a connected RTOS framework can dramatically accelerate development but it can also cause delays and budget overruns if developers don’t understand the frameworks architecture and how to build their application around it.

In this course, we will examine the Amazon FreeRTOS framework and learn how to build an extensible and reusable application architecture around it. We will examine how Amazon Web Services works and the steps necessary to configure IoT edge nodes and handle bi-directional communication with the cloud. Attendees will also learn how about how to optimize their design for size, performance and energy. Each session includes a hands-on lab to help developers get experience with the concepts we discuss during the lectures.

The course consists of the following sessions:

Session 1 – The Amazon FreeRTOS Architecture
Session 2 – All about AWS
Session 3 – Subscribing and Publishing
Session 4 – Command Processsing, Performance and Optimization
Session 5 – OTA Updates

The course is taught in a convenient, hands-on style that provides developers with ample time to not just absorb the material but begin to apply it. The course is offered live online and in self-paced formats:

Online Course Starts on January 10th, 2019!

Save 33% with our early bird special until December 1st.

Embedded Software Design Books

Reusable Firmware Development – A Practical Approach to API’s, HAL’s and Drivers
AVAILABLE NOW!

Gain the knowledge and skills necessary to improve your embedded software and benefit from author Jacob Beningo’s more than 15 years developing reusable and portable software for resource-constrained microcontroller-based systems. You will explore APIs, HALs, and driver development among other topics to acquire a solid foundation for improving your own software. Reusable Firmware Development: A Practical Approach to APIs, HALs and Drivers not only explains critical concepts, but also provides a plethora of examples, exercises, and case studies on how to use and implement the concepts.

Click here to learn more …

Interested in learning more? Visit our website to find out more about Beningo Embedded, or check out our blog to see our entire article archive – read past articles, search by category, and much more!