embedded

I am trying to improve my embedded C/C++ development on ARM architecture. I have recently moved from 68K development to ARM and wanted to use some of my spare time to dig into the platform and learn the best practices especially on developing for mobile platforms. Preferably 32bit architecture will be helpful with supporting development tools. A bit of fun during the learning process may enhance my understanding of the platform ST Micro has a very attractively priced (and packaged too) kit for their ARM Cortex-M3 based STM32 line. MSRP runs about US$35 for the STM32-PRIMER with 128x128 color

Having moved some embedded code to FreeRTOS, I'm left with an interesting dilemma about the watchdog. The watchdog timer is a must for our application. Using FreeRTOS has been a huge boon for us too. When the application was more single-tasked, it fed the watchdog at timely points in its logic flow so that we could make sure the task was making logical progress in a timely fashion. With multiple tasks though, that's not easy. One task could be bound up for some reason, not making progress, but another is doing just fine and making enough progress to keep the watchdog fed happily. One thought

Although there are plenty of unit test frameworks that support C, I'm a little stumped on how to write unit tests for micro controller code (PIC in my case, but I think the question is more general than that). Much of the code written for micro controllers revolves around Writing configuration and data values to registers, reading incoming data from registers and responding to interrupt events. I'm wondering if anyone can provide some pointers on the most effective way to this. You write; "Much of the code written for micro controllers revolves around Writing configuration and data values to

I am working with an ARM Cortex M3 chip (STM32F2) and ST provides a "standard peripheral library". It has some useful .c and .h files. It also has .s files. What is the purpose of these .s files in the context of a C project? How do I get my compiler/linker/? to take them into account? The .s extension is the convention used by GNU and many other tool-chains for assembler files. Last I looked the STM32 Standard Peripheral Library itself contains no assembler files, however the CMSIS library contains start-up code for various STM32 parts, for example startup_stm32f2xx.s is start-up code for all

I'm interested in programming languages well suited for embedded programming. In particular: Is it possible to program embedded systems in C++? Or is it better to use pure C? Or is C++ OK only if some features of the language (e.g. RTTI, exceptions and templates) are excluded? What about Java in this domain? Thanks. Is it possible to program embedded systems in C++? Yes, of course, even on 8bit systems. C++ only has a slightly different run-time initialisation requirements than C, that being that before main() is invoked constructors for any static objects must be called. The overhead (not

I am looking at moving my product from an RTOS to embedded Linux. I don't have many real-time requirements, and the few RT requirements I have are on the order of 10s of milliseconds. Can someone point me to a reference that will tell me how Real-Time the current version of Linux is? Are there any other gotchas from moving to a commercial RTOS to Linux? You can get most of your answers from the Real Time Linux wiki and FAQ What are real-time capabilities of the stock 2.6 linux kernel? Traditionally, the Linux kernel will only allow one process to preempt another only under certain

I would like to make my own embedded system built on Android (ARM) just using devices distributed with Android but without their launcher. OR I want to start Android with my application launched on top and refuse to close it and shutdown Android from my app. Karim Yaghmour Essentially you're trying to have a custom build of the AOSP where the "Home" is your application. If you look into /packages/apps/Launcher2 you'll find the code for the default Home screen. If you look at the AndroidManifest.xml file in there, you'll see something like this: <activity android:name="com.android.launcher2