35 article(s) tagged “Embedded Systems”. ← All Posts
Before automating deploy and debug, I put the toolchain path, board IP, user, and GDB port into .vscode/settings.json so every task reads the same seven values from one file.
Read More →Stop juggling an LED, a button, and a socket in one giant loop. Here's the Start/loop/Stop task pattern on POSIX threads I now build first on every embedded Linux project, including the DE10-Nano.
Read More →Typing a long ARM gcc command every time I changed a file got old fast. Here's the small Makefile I wrote before my first real feature: the right cross-compiler, the right flags, and only rebuilding what changed.
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Your laptop is x86, the DE10-Nano's ARM. Here's a full working setup â Makefile, tasks.json, launch.json, settings.json â that cross-compiles a C program, ships it to the board over SSH, and lets you set breakpoints and step through it live from VS Code.
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The newest-dated file on Terasic's DE10-Nano download page isn't an OS image at all â it's a reference-design bundle. Here's where the real bootable Angstrom Linux image actually lives, and what's inside it.
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Cataloguing every onboard peripheral on the DE10-Nano straight from the official User Manual â FPGA-side buttons, switches, ADC, and HDMI; HPS-side UART, accelerometer, Ethernet, and more â before writing a single line of project code.
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A comprehensive, one-page reference table mapping every P8 and P9 header pin on the BeagleBone Black to its GPIO bank/offset, Linux GPIO number, and default alternate function.
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Why I picked up the DE10-Nano Cyclone V SoC FPGA after a whole series on the BeagleBone Black â an ARM Cortex-A9 running Linux paired with FPGA fabric you program yourself.
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Moving recvfrom() inside the loop and adding a strcmp() dispatcher so a UDP command from Windows actually turns a BeagleBone Black LED on and off instead of just printing to the screen.
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Sending a C struct instead of a raw string over UDP, then triggering an independent loop on a BeagleBone Black with a single one-shot Winsock2 packet from a Windows PC.
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Enabling SO_BROADCAST on a BeagleBone Black UDP socket to reach an entire LAN subnet, then proving delivery with a Wireshark capture on a separate Windows PC.
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Building a UDP echo server and client in C with socket(), bind(), sendto(), and recvfrom() on the BeagleBone Black â the smallest working example of the Berkeley sockets API, and what actually happens (and doesn't) when a UDP packet leaves the kernel.
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Refactoring a single-LED sysfs blink program on the BeagleBone Black into a path array, a setup loop, and an array of FILE* handles â a C/C++ embedded systems example built and cross-compiled in Eclipse CDT, the smallest useful pattern for driving N identical sysfs devices from C.
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How to write a small C program that takes manual control of a BeagleBone Black USER LED through /sys/class/leds and blinks it on a 2-second loop using trigger, brightness, rewind, and fflush.
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How to wire up Eclipse on Windows, a cross-compiled ARM gdb, and gdbserver on a BeagleBone Black so you can set breakpoints and inspect variables while your code runs live on the target.
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How to translate a BeagleBone Black USER LED's datasheet pin nickname into the Linux GPIO number, then toggle it through both the raw sysfs GPIO interface and the friendlier LED class interface.
Read More →A hands-on walkthrough of debugging BeagleBone Black GPIO pins using gpioinfo and the AM335x pinmux debugfs interface.
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How to read live AM335x pinmux register values straight from the Linux kernel's debugfs interface to debug a misbehaving BeagleBone Black GPIO pin.
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Setting up Eclipse CDT, the GNU ARM toolchain, and the Remote System Explorer plugin to cross-compile C/C++ and deploy straight to a BeagleBone Black.
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A hands-on walkthrough of GPIO on the BeagleBone Black's AM3358 â pin muxing, register decoding, and reading real pin values from the Linux command line.
Read More →You don't need separate BOOT and ROOTFS files for the BeagleBone Black â the official BeagleBoard.org image already has both. Here's how to flash it, boot from eMMC vs SD, and SSH in for the first time.
Read More →Most beginners skip this step and wonder why their BeagleBone Black won't boot. Here's why you need TWO SD card partitions (FAT for boot, EXT4 for root) and how to set them up in an Ubuntu VM.
Read More →A plain-English walkthrough of the BeagleBone Black's 4-stage boot process â from the built-in ROM bootloader all the way to Linux taking over.
Read More →Exploring the STM32F446RE Nucleo-64's key components, pinout, and features to help you decide if it's the right board for embedded development.
Read More →A practical, analogy-driven breakdown of how PDDR and bitwise operators control pin direction in embedded C, no hardware background needed.
Read More →A beginner-friendly guide to running C unit tests inside Docker containers with VS Code, perfect for embedded software developers who want consistent, conflict-free builds.
Read More →Step-by-step guide to writing, compiling, and running a C program in VS Code on Windows using MinGW and the C/C++ extension.
Read More →A beginner's guide to Raspberry Pi embedded development with C â from hardware setup to writing and running your first program.
Read More →Why safety-critical software demands 100% test coverage, and what happens when engineers cut corners on it.
Read More →Learn how to create TBrun test cases for C functions that take pointer arguments, step by step, with real examples.
Read More →A beginner-friendly breakdown of whitebox testing: what it is, how it works, and why every developer should understand it.
Read More →A beginner-friendly breakdown of LDRA TBRUN white box and gray box test setup, covering theory, tool specifics, and real-world tips in plain English.
Read More →A quick MSYS2 UCRT terminal trick to syntax-check your C header files in VS Code without running a full build.
Read More →Explore the MitySOM-5CSx: A technical guide to memory mapping, LTC2945 power monitoring, and HPS/FPGA integration for embedded systems engineers.
Read More →Discover my first experience with LDRA embedded C code testing platform - from complex setup and licensing to achieving 50% code coverage with TBextremeTest.
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