How-to Articles

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.

Examining the structure of the ANSI and ISO usability standards is the first step to developing medical devices that protect users from accidents.

Every commercial RTOS employs a priority-based preemptive scheduler. This despite the fact that real-time systems vary in their requirements and real-time scheduling doesn't have to be so uniform. Multitasking and meeting deadlines is certainly not a one-size-fits-all problem.

With thoughtful design, user interfaces for embedded systems can avoid some user errors altogether and helpfully guide the user through the rest.

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. 

Controller Area Network (CAN) is the most widely-used automotive bus architecture. Here are some reasons why.

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.

Most real-time operating systems employ preemptive schedulers. This primer on preemption also looks at the kind of multitasking it enables

Motorola's Background Debug Mode is one of a variety of on-chip debug technologies. Collectively, they offer some of the best features of debug monitors and in-circuit emulators—with far less headache and cost.