electronics

The U.S. District Court of Delaware's "Default Standard for Access to Source Code" follows many but not all recommended best practices for source code discovery.  This month we consider potential areas for improvement in the default rules of this important venue for patent infringement and software copyright litigation.

Unexpected power loss and software bugs can undermine the reliability of non-volatile data. Fortunately, there are various ways to make non-volatile data resilient to such corruption.

Designing firmware-accessible debugging resources into embedded systems provides a valuable supplement to hardware test and analysis tools.

These built-in troubleshooting resources for direct memory access (DMA) controllers can pave the way for smoother embedded software integration.

What is the Design by Contract programming philosophy, what can it do for you, and why should all embedded software developers care?

The way you write software can affect the power consumption of the resulting product. Here are four approaches to minimizing power consumption through software.

An object-oriented framework can be used to create safe, testable and tunable motion control systems.

A number of embedded systems, such as medical devices and printers, feature replaceable components designed to be installed new, consumed through one or more cycles of product use, and ultimately disposed.

With all the automation available today, it's easy for programmers to overlook costly overhead introduced into machine code by the compiler. Interrupt handlers are one key area worthy of a closer inspection.

C's offsetof() macro can be a helpful addition to your bag of tricks, including for packing data structures and describing how EEPROM data are stored.

For embedded software developers, the most significant improvements to the C programming language made in the ISO C99 standard update are in the new <stdint.h> header file. Learn the typedef names for the new fixed width integer data types, to make hardware interfacing in C easier. 

Distributed systems require protocols for communication between microcontrollers. Controller Area Networks (CAN) and Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI) are two of the most common such protocols.

The limitations of an 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) can sometimes make conventional C constructs produce suboptimal code. In this article we look at common problems on the 8051 family and discuss workarounds in C.

Counter units (aka, timer units) are crucial components of most embedded systems and included in many microcontrollers. Here's a primer on the hardware.

Most control systems utilize feedback in some manner. Here's a look at several fundamental feedback mechanisms, culminating in a description of a basic PID controller.

Some human languages are read and written from left to right; others from right to left. A similar issue arises in the field of computers, involving the representation of numbers.

For those embedded systems that can't be constantly watched by a human, watchdog timers may be the solution.

Most embedded systems need to be self-reliant. It's not usually possible to wait for someone to reboot them if the software hangs. Some embedded designs, such as space probes, are simply not accessible to human operators. If their software ever hangs, such systems are permanently disabled. In other cases, the speed with which a human operator might reset the system would be too slow to meet the uptime requirements of the product.

Pulse width modulation (PWM) is a powerful technique for controlling analog circuits with a processor's digital outputs. PWM is employed in a wide variety of applications, ranging from measurement and communications to power control and conversion.

The proper use of C's volatile keyword is poorly understood by many programmers. This article will teach you the proper way to do it.

SRAM or DRAM? EEPROM or flash? What types of memory will you use in your next embedded systems design?

When it comes to safety-critical applications, sometimes you have to protect users from the software. And sometimes you have to protect users from themselves.

To keep a watchdog timer from resetting your system, you've got to kick it regularly. But that's not all there is to watchdog science. We will examine the use and testing of a watchdog, as well as the integration of a watchdog into a multitasking environment.

If ever there was a piece of embedded software ripe for reuse it's the memory test. This article shows how to test for the most common memory problems with a set of three efficient, portable, public-domain memory test functions.

Embedded software developers operate in a perfect digital environment but must interact with the imperfect analog real world. To do this it's essential to know how to perform calibration of inputs and sensors.

Given a particular programming problem, what language should you use to realize the solution? Your choice could very well affect the success or failure of the project. So you'd better choose wisely.

Quite a few embedded systems include multiple processors. Sometimes these processors stand in isolation, but more often they're required to communicate over a multidrop bus such as EIA RS-485 or RS-422.

In recent years, the line between hardware and software has blurred. Hardware now engineers create the bulk of their new digital circuitry in programming languages such as VHDL and Verilog. This article will help you make sense of programmable logic.

Jump tables, also called branch tables, are an efficient means of handling similar events in software. Here's a look at the use of arrays of function pointers in C/C++ as jump tables.

Designers of embedded systems face three significant challenges in today's ultra-competitive marketplace. Products must always: do more, cost less, and arrive to market faster. Fortunately, new flexible hardware design techniques are emerging from the study of reconfigurable computing.