Cross-compiling is an integral part of embedded software development. Most established projects adhere to set of well defined contract to achieve this. But still, there are many other (smaller) projects which employ subtle variations to achieve the same effect. Owing to this, a lot of beginners get thrown off guard...

TFTP is a very simple UDP file transfer protocol that can be implemented with very little effort and footprint. For this reason, TFTP servers are very crucial for embedded developers even if they are used only for the purpose of firmware upgrades. This article is more of a note-to-self so...

The first thing that comes to mind when we talk about dynamic memory and leaks is Valgrind. You may also be familiar with static analysis tools, such as Coverity. It could be DevPartner or Boundschecker or many such tools that I won’t dare attempt to list here. But what if...

For those of you who haven’t heard about GNU Screen, it is a window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes, typically interactive shells. It allows you to start, retain, attach and detach to a session across different connections. In lay man’s terms, it’s a life saver when...

If you have been listening closely, you would have heard the buzz around Zephyr - a Real Time Operating system (RTOS) for embedded systems. The real buzz comes from the fact that this RTOS is being tweaked for IoT platforms in particular. A lot of action is happening around Zephyr...

Hello folks, In my previous post on Linux kernel compilation for Beaglebone black, I had used pre-built RFS for booting the kernel. Also, I mentioned that the RFS could be built from scratch using a utility called Busybox. In this post, we’ll see, how to create a Custom RFS using...

Over the past few days, I received a plethora of emails and messages on how to make a line follower robot. Mostly, the specification being white line on a black surface. Some even mentioned shortest path detection loops in the track. Now, I do get emails in which people ask...

At some point in time we all have had to develop some sort of UI for our embedded devices. The thing about UI design is, it can take one hell of a time before we can get it right (and it’s a thankless job! I have my reasons). I for...

External event counters are pretty useful things to have around. Once I had a feud with a shopkeeper for selling 4 motors in 3 different RPMs. Well, I don’t know if you have ever tried making a robot that had wheels rotating at different speeds, I did. It wasn’t a...

It’s been a while since I wrote my first article and though I need to come up with something a little more advanced this time, something which will be perfect for the die-hard Linux users and those who await to get their hands dirty with some kernel grease. For the...

External event counters are pretty useful things to have around. Once I had a feud with a shopkeeper for selling 4 motors in 3 different RPMs. Well, I don’t know if you have ever tried making a robot that had wheels rotating at different speeds, I did. It wasn’t a...

It’s been a while since I wrote my first article and though I need to come up with something a little more advanced this time, something which will be perfect for the die-hard Linux users and those who await to get their hands dirty with some kernel grease. For the...

Embedded software often involves state machines, circular buffers and queues. This article will give you an overview of the data structure and walks you through the steps involved in implementing circular buffers in low memory devices. If you are already familiar with the basics of such data structures, feel free...

In this post we will discuss logic and interface of a matrix keypad (4x4 for this post) with microcontroller to reduce the number of port pins required to read a certain number of inputs (digital). The same logic applies to any matrix keypad of order NxN. Where, N is the...

In my previous post Introduction to Stepper Motors and How they Work, we had a look at stepper motors and how they work. This post will deal with the programming and circuitry involved in the stepper motor interface with PIC microcontroller. Usually a microcontroller is used to produce the stepping...

I was working on a project that involved the use of an SD (Secure Digital) card to log data into a text file. I chose Arduino as it had a vary stable FAT (File Allocation Table) library. I had an Arduino Mega at my disposal and built a resistive network...

Programming a Line Follower Robot is the next step that you should do after building it. This is a follow-up on my previous post Line Follower Robot - Build it from scratch. If you haven’t already read it, I suggest you read it before going any further in this post....

Whether you are an engineering student building a multi terrain vehicle or an electronics hobbyist trying to impress people with your skills, making a RC robot car (wireless) is much better than the wired robot which you will have to tail while driving. This is not exactly a robotics project....