Embedded Systems Weekly #127

Welcome to issue #127! I hope you all had a great week coding, designing and testing your projects. It is now the moment to read the selection of links that I put together for you.

Happy reading!

Sponsor

Luos Makes Embedded Device Firmware Updates Easy

The new Luos bootloader updates all boards without needing physical access to each of them. Now, it’s possible to update firmware on many microcontroller units (MCU) without needing a specific bootloader for each different board. Get Started →

Sponsor Embedsys Weekly and reach 1000+

Articles

The RS-232 protocol

After months without tutorials, Ben Eater delivers a new video as good as all the previous ones. Pedagogically, it is of high quality.

How to make sure no Dynamic Memory is used

You know the drill to build a robust system: No dynamic memory allocation. This article gives you tips to configure your build in order to be sure that no malloc slipped into your final binary. As a bonus, you get a short introduction on how to use the linker cross reference.

Writing Verilog code using Python with Migen.

Following this article, you’ll get your first module generated under 1 hour. In issue #91 I linked the tool chain Amaranth HDL an alternative to Migen for abstracting away standard HDL languages with Python. Check it out too.

Boolean algebra for noobs: stack alignment

A short but interesting article that explains why and how the assembly code generated is making a stack alignment.

TinyCPM - CP/M on a Tiny 2040

For the fans of CP/M among us, this article will show you how to put together a CP/M based system so small that you can bring it with you everywhere all the time.

The unusual bootstrap drivers inside the 8086 microprocessor chip

Ken Shirriff managed to pull out yet another article on something I didn’t know about the 8086. Please tell me that I’m not the only one who didn’t know about this bootstrap driver!

Creating a pick and place control board with the RP204

No details are let in the dark in this article. Every aspect of the pick and place control board is described clearly with nice illustrations. It is a really nice article to read.

How 74HC595 Shift Register Works & Interface it with Arduino

This is a good introduction on why and how using shift registers.

Tools / Libraries

PRNF

I’m keeping an eye on this lightweight tiny printf alternative. It is one year old and get a 1.0.0 release recently, but doesn’t have any tests. It could become interesting with a bit more QA.

Misc

FPGA + PCIe Hardware Accelerator Design Walkthrough (DDR3, M.2, ..)

A walk through of a FPGA-based (Xilinx Artix 7) PCIe hardware accelerator in an M.2 form-factor.