7 ms·

Foundations of Embedded Systems

167 points by blindm 6y ago

RMPR 6y ago
This is actually pretty great. I was looking for a way to dip my toes into low level stuff. After skimming a bit it seems very focused on hardware though. Out of curiosity how does it compare to https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/ https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/ ?
- jimmyswimmy 6y ago
  Most of what embedded is, is hardware. To build the low level software and drivers requires a detailed understanding of the hardware and its datasheets. It would be pretty hard to give a generic overview of the software side these days, because there is just so much out there. I mean you have the TI parts for the beagle bone which have a pair of microcontrollers on them each having access to the same memory as the main processor. There's the video processor on Broadcoms chip in the raspberry pi. Understanding any of the details of these components requires understanding most of thousands of pages of documentation. Most people wait for someone else to do it for them! In the old days the only peripherals were timers and ADCs. You could make a generic and useful tutorial for those. Not anymore!
  - diydsp 6y ago
    After a few decades in the biz I'm seeing things change. Almost all drivers these days are written. Embedded is more about integration. It's also interconnected with many web-based tools and operating systems.
    - m-ee 6y ago
      I wish all drivers were written. Aside from things like arduino/pyboard the choice in my experience has been using some massively bloated questionably tested vendor code or just going to the data sheet and writing it yourself.
  - markus_zhang 6y ago
    Just curious, is it possible to be good at digital circuit without studying analog circuit? I figured by skipping AC I might miss a huge part of the picture.
    - dbuder 6y ago
      Everything is analog, your rise time, your standing waves, your sensors and everything has parasitics. My rule of thumb is that anytime you tell yourself you will avoid learning something in electronics you will eventually have to learn it. That said, you can get a very long way by knowing almost nothing at all beyond high school science and playing lego, and I'm not talking about arduino at all. Need an Analog Front End? Take one from a reference design, take their code while you are at it. Want to know what is messing with your circuit? Learn and understand Maxwell's equations, or put it on a scope and google about. If you want to get products manufactured there is a lot to learn but if you do normal well understood things you don't need to be brilliant or talented.
      - tedfernau 6y ago
        I wouldn’t say Maxwells equations are necessary to accomplish almost anything in embedded systems, or even in most of electrical engineering.
      - markus_zhang 6y ago
        Thanks, I got the idea. So basically the deeper you go the more fundamental you have to go back, right? I'm also considering a bottom up method that starts from (re)learning circuits from high school physics classes. Back then, IIRC we also used breadboard and I very much enjoyed the experiment part of the course. Plus it might help the kid in the future.
- petee 6y ago
  Check out "Introductory Microcontroller Programming" by Peter Alley (to be clear, not me.) for Wocester Polytech; I came across this by accident the other day - [pdf] https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042811-095908/unrestricted/alley.pdf https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042811-095908/unr... Over the period of being the TA for these courses multiple times, I learned a great deal, but also noticed several recurring issues the students seemed to face. In addition to furthering my own knowledge on the care and feeding of microcontrollers, this thesis is an attempt to provide students with a resource to overcome some of their difficulties, to provide a better understanding of the hardware level operation of a microcontroller, and as instruction into improving their knowledge and code. edit: in addition, for really low level hardware, check out Ben Eater's series on YouTube building a breadboard 6502
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sircastor 6y ago
This is a bit of a side step to the article, but I recommend anyone who wants to really learn low level programming try to write a simple piece of software for the NES. The 6502 is well known, how the NES operates is likewise well known. Is not easy by any means, but I found it to be very rewarding and instructional to how computers work. Alternatively, following Ben Eater’s 6502 computer videos is likewise instructional. I admit this may have had the effect on me because the NES had a special place in my childhood.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  I would go for the GBA, which has a much more comfortable processor, and some very nice graphics hardware. It really hits a sweet spot for capability vs. constrainedness.
- molticrystal 6y ago
  Or you could go from an even more fundamental level with a simple course https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ You build up a computer from simulated logic gates, constructing the ALU, CPU, Ram, I/O etc. The opcodes are comparable to those in the CPUs you mentioned, but you have the added benefit of the magic that occurs when it is able to process those opcodes. The best part is, thanks to the courses exceptional guidance and streamlining, it only takes about half a day or so to get it to that point. After that you can follow the rest of the course to making a compiler, etc. Or you could move to an NES emulator as you mentioned. The nand2tetris halfway mark would also be a good jumping point for the principles, compiler, and RISC equipment mentioned in the OP's course.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I once designed a microcoded bit slice processor on paper. It's useful because it's conceptually simple enough to get in your head. And there isn't anything software related that really can't be mapped to it. Or an extension of it.
  - ibeckermayer 6y ago
    I've been working on a project off and on where I'm implementing the processor described in that course on an FPGA. Most of the digital design is done at this point: https://github.com/ibeckermayer/Nand2TetrisFPGA https://github.com/ibeckermayer/Nand2TetrisFPGA
hvasilev 6y ago
Why are so many videos not available until November 2021?
- ldx1024 6y ago
  Upcoming events. They are not doing the livestream until then.
miguelrochefort 6y ago
I never cared about low-level programming, until I got my hands on the PineTime/Colmi P8 smart watch. With just 64KB of RAM and 514KB of Flash memory, you can't avoid it. In just a few days, I learned a lot about: - Memory allocation - Image encoding - Bluetooth - Drivers I recommend it to anyone interested in learning embedded systems programming.
- iamcreasy 6y ago
  Very interesting. The dev kit is also very cheap. Did you learn those things through official documentation? or some other source?
contingencies 6y ago
http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/ http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/ <-- more fun

167 points by blindm 6y ago

RMPR 6y ago

This is actually pretty great. I was looking for a way to dip my toes into low level stuff. After skimming a bit it seems very focused on hardware though. Out of curiosity how does it compare to https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/ https://jaycarlson.net/embedded-linux/ ?

jimmyswimmy 6y ago
Most of what embedded is, is hardware. To build the low level software and drivers requires a detailed understanding of the hardware and its datasheets. It would be pretty hard to give a generic overview of the software side these days, because there is just so much out there. I mean you have the TI parts for the beagle bone which have a pair of microcontrollers on them each having access to the same memory as the main processor. There's the video processor on Broadcoms chip in the raspberry pi. Understanding any of the details of these components requires understanding most of thousands of pages of documentation. Most people wait for someone else to do it for them! In the old days the only peripherals were timers and ADCs. You could make a generic and useful tutorial for those. Not anymore!
- diydsp 6y ago
  After a few decades in the biz I'm seeing things change. Almost all drivers these days are written. Embedded is more about integration. It's also interconnected with many web-based tools and operating systems.
  - m-ee 6y ago
    I wish all drivers were written. Aside from things like arduino/pyboard the choice in my experience has been using some massively bloated questionably tested vendor code or just going to the data sheet and writing it yourself.
- markus_zhang 6y ago
  Just curious, is it possible to be good at digital circuit without studying analog circuit? I figured by skipping AC I might miss a huge part of the picture.
  - dbuder 6y ago
    Everything is analog, your rise time, your standing waves, your sensors and everything has parasitics. My rule of thumb is that anytime you tell yourself you will avoid learning something in electronics you will eventually have to learn it. That said, you can get a very long way by knowing almost nothing at all beyond high school science and playing lego, and I'm not talking about arduino at all. Need an Analog Front End? Take one from a reference design, take their code while you are at it. Want to know what is messing with your circuit? Learn and understand Maxwell's equations, or put it on a scope and google about. If you want to get products manufactured there is a lot to learn but if you do normal well understood things you don't need to be brilliant or talented.
    - tedfernau 6y ago
      I wouldn’t say Maxwells equations are necessary to accomplish almost anything in embedded systems, or even in most of electrical engineering.
    - markus_zhang 6y ago
      Thanks, I got the idea. So basically the deeper you go the more fundamental you have to go back, right? I'm also considering a bottom up method that starts from (re)learning circuits from high school physics classes. Back then, IIRC we also used breadboard and I very much enjoyed the experiment part of the course. Plus it might help the kid in the future.
petee 6y ago
Check out "Introductory Microcontroller Programming" by Peter Alley (to be clear, not me.) for Wocester Polytech; I came across this by accident the other day - [pdf] https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042811-095908/unrestricted/alley.pdf https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-042811-095908/unr... Over the period of being the TA for these courses multiple times, I learned a great deal, but also noticed several recurring issues the students seemed to face. In addition to furthering my own knowledge on the care and feeding of microcontrollers, this thesis is an attempt to provide students with a resource to overcome some of their difficulties, to provide a better understanding of the hardware level operation of a microcontroller, and as instruction into improving their knowledge and code. edit: in addition, for really low level hardware, check out Ben Eater's series on YouTube building a breadboard 6502

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sircastor 6y ago

This is a bit of a side step to the article, but I recommend anyone who wants to really learn low level programming try to write a simple piece of software for the NES. The 6502 is well known, how the NES operates is likewise well known. Is not easy by any means, but I found it to be very rewarding and instructional to how computers work. Alternatively, following Ben Eater’s 6502 computer videos is likewise instructional. I admit this may have had the effect on me because the NES had a special place in my childhood.

user-the-name 6y ago
I would go for the GBA, which has a much more comfortable processor, and some very nice graphics hardware. It really hits a sweet spot for capability vs. constrainedness.
molticrystal 6y ago
Or you could go from an even more fundamental level with a simple course https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ You build up a computer from simulated logic gates, constructing the ALU, CPU, Ram, I/O etc. The opcodes are comparable to those in the CPUs you mentioned, but you have the added benefit of the magic that occurs when it is able to process those opcodes. The best part is, thanks to the courses exceptional guidance and streamlining, it only takes about half a day or so to get it to that point. After that you can follow the rest of the course to making a compiler, etc. Or you could move to an NES emulator as you mentioned. The nand2tetris halfway mark would also be a good jumping point for the principles, compiler, and RISC equipment mentioned in the OP's course.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I once designed a microcoded bit slice processor on paper. It's useful because it's conceptually simple enough to get in your head. And there isn't anything software related that really can't be mapped to it. Or an extension of it.
- ibeckermayer 6y ago
  I've been working on a project off and on where I'm implementing the processor described in that course on an FPGA. Most of the digital design is done at this point: https://github.com/ibeckermayer/Nand2TetrisFPGA https://github.com/ibeckermayer/Nand2TetrisFPGA

hvasilev 6y ago

Why are so many videos not available until November 2021?

ldx1024 6y ago
Upcoming events. They are not doing the livestream until then.

miguelrochefort 6y ago

I never cared about low-level programming, until I got my hands on the PineTime/Colmi P8 smart watch. With just 64KB of RAM and 514KB of Flash memory, you can't avoid it. In just a few days, I learned a lot about: - Memory allocation - Image encoding - Bluetooth - Drivers I recommend it to anyone interested in learning embedded systems programming.

iamcreasy 6y ago
Very interesting. The dev kit is also very cheap. Did you learn those things through official documentation? or some other source?

contingencies 6y ago

http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/ http://www.zachtronics.com/shenzhen-io/ <-- more fun