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...

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...

Most of you must have used a Real Time Clock (RTC) at some point. RTCs are small ICs that have a separate battery backup and allow you to keep track of time. Typical place where you can expect to see an RTC in action is your computer. They are used...

You might think its pass time while I was talking about simple electromagnetic bells at my blog. Truth be told I would agree with you and embedjournal is pitching for a higher game in the near future. We will soon get into some android programming and write mobile apps that...