article33 min read
Zephyr West Workspace: A Reproducible Dev Environment in 2024
West workspaces are powerful and under-documented. A setup that works across macOS, Linux, and a CI container with pinned tool versions.
Mar 5, 202460 views
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Embedded Systems
Microcontroller programming, real-time systems, IoT development, and firmware engineering
33 articles•Updated regularly•Curated by Manish
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NuttX First Impressions: A POSIX RTOS With Real Trade-offs
NuttX is the only embedded RTOS I know that takes POSIX seriously. That fidelity has a cost in footprint and build complexity.
March 8, 2024
28 min read
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article33 min read
Zephyr vs FreeRTOS Scheduling: Notes From a Migration
We migrated a mid-complexity sensor hub from FreeRTOS 10 to Zephyr 3.4. The scheduler semantics differ more than the docs admit.
Jan 22, 202452 views
article20 min read
Real-Time Operating Systems: FreeRTOS vs Zephyr Performance Analysis
Comprehensive comparison of FreeRTOS and Zephyr RTOS for embedded applications, including memory usage, real-time performance, and development ecosystem analysis.
Jan 10, 2024366 views
article30 min read
Designing Low-Power IoT Sensors with Ultra-Long Battery Life
Complete guide to designing IoT sensors that run for years on a single battery using advanced power management techniques and energy harvesting.
Jan 8, 2024480 views
article30 min read
Interrupt Latency on Zephyr: Measuring What the Docs Don't State
Zephyr's interrupt handling adds overhead over bare-metal. Measuring that overhead on nRF5340 with a GPIO toggle and a scope reveals the real numbers.
Jan 8, 202462 views
article38 min read
Custom ARM Cortex-M Bootloader Development for Secure OTA Updates
Learn to develop a secure bootloader for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers with encrypted firmware updates, rollback protection, and fail-safe recovery mechanisms.
Jan 5, 2024368 views
article29 min read
CAN FD vs Classical CAN: A Practical Trade-off Table
CAN FD doubles the data phase bitrate and extends the payload to 64 bytes. The transceiver choice and EMC implications follow from those two facts in non-obvious ways.
Nov 28, 202344 views
article31 min read
Rust no_std DMA on Cortex-M: What the Tutorials Skip
Getting DMA transfers working in a no_std Rust environment on Cortex-M is straightforward until it isn't. Memory ownership and interrupt safety are the hard parts.
Nov 5, 202354 views
article27 min read
CI for Firmware: Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing on a $200 Budget
Running firmware CI without hardware-in-the-loop tests is incomplete. A QEMU + real-hardware hybrid pipeline that doesn't require a $10,000 test rack.
Oct 4, 2023110 views
article29 min read
STM32H7: Cache Coherency With DMA — The Errata Chapter Nobody Reads
D-cache on the H7 will silently corrupt your DMA buffers unless you align and flush correctly. Here is exactly where I got burned.
Sep 1, 202356 views
article33 min read
STM32H7: DMA Double-Buffering Mistake That Looked Like SPI Drift
A week of false leads ended in one NVIC priority inversion and a lesson about completion interrupts I won't forget.
Aug 14, 202372 views