issue 86 - Embedded systems newsletter

Embedded systems #86

Happy Friday folks,
I know. I said I will not talk about it… As it hurts me personally… But I have to go over the fact that it was the pride of my city and acknowledge that it’s a very big (and bad) event for the IoT sector. Yes, Sigfox files for bankruptcy . And yes, the company raised $300M. What will be the impact on the future IoT startups is hard to measure but, definitely, investors will keep the Sigfox failure in their mind.

Thank you to TubeTimeUS for the header’s picture.

Articles

Async Rust vs RTOS showdown!
A deep comparative performance analysis between Embassy/Rust and FreeRTOS/C on the STM32F446. Can you guess the surprising outcome before reading it?

Building a SoC with Litex.
This article with an example puts clearly the advantages that Litex brings to the table: “a tool that allows a software developer implement a soft core in an FPGA” and “the time requires for the implementation of the FPGA design will be the minimum as possible

A better Bash history
Like Pete Warden who shared this tip of him, I rely a lot on my Bash history. The advantages of this short but powerful gist: infinite history, instant appending of commands, and shared history across multiple terminals.

How To Use FreeRTOS on the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) Part 1: VSCode Setup and Blinky Test!
The on-going series of “Learn Enbedded Systems” is a good for beginners. They already released 3 parts.
Here are Part 2: Tasks and Queues and Part 3: Scheduling and Task Priorities

Call for Papers for Hardwear.io USA is open!
The @hardwear_io USA 2022 Call for Papers is open now. If you have a groundbreaking embedded research or an awesome open-source tool you’d like to showcase to the global hardware security community, this is your chance. Send in your ideas on various hardware topics, including but not limited to Chips, Processors, ICS/SCADA,Telecom, Protocols & Cryptography. Submit now!

Tools

modm: a barebone embedded library generator
modm is a toolbox for generating barebone C++20 libraries for your specific microcontroller and application. modm generates startup code, linkerscripts, hardware abstraction layers, communication protocols, external device drivers and board support packages in a modular process that you can tune to your needs.

Tracing & Logging with the TRICE Library (Interrupts too!)
Trice is a small, performant software tracer and logger. It tries to be as easy to use than printf and to have a minimal impact even on small microcontrollers.

32-bit Interconnected RISC-V MCU CH32V307
WCH released an open source 8 serial UART Server running on the RISC-V MCU V307 board and with the RTOS RT-Thread OS. Like others, I believe it’s a good starting point for a test bench for your main board.

Education

Introduction to Classical and Quantum Computing
Tom Wong published his FREE book two weeks ago. I didn’t read it yet, but the expectations are rather high. He promises that the only Math prerequisite is trigonometry!

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces
This good book is guiding the reader through the complexity of an OS by cutting it in three big chunks: virtualization, concurrency and persistence.

Jobs

Engineer I/II, Embedded Systems Development
Engineer I/II, Embedded Systems Development - Queretaro, QUE, Mexico - Full-time

Misc

Stormtrooper Attack – Making Your Own Video Games, 1970’s Style (Part 3)
Nathaniel is this kind of guys who is crazy enough to try to follow the instructions of a book from 1978 to build a game without software. Only hardware. Only discrete TTL! He shared with me that he is doing it again: A Pinball TTL game!!