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.
