• GNU Build IDs for Firmware

    by François Baldassari

    In this post, we demonstrate how to use the GNU Build ID to uniquely identify a build. We explain what the GNU build ID is, how it is enabled, and how it is used in a firmware context.

  • Debugging Firmware with GDB

    by Mohammad Afaneh

    If I had to choose one significant aspect that I was not aware of before starting my career as a firmware developer, it would be how much time is spent not actually developing, and instead debugging firmware!

  • From Zero to main(): Bare metal C

    by François Baldassari

    Throughout the Zero to main() series of posts, we demystify what happens between when power is applied and your main function is called. In the process, we’ll learn how to bootstrap a C environment, implement a bootloader, relocate code, and more!

  • Programming the ATSAMD21 with IBDAP

    by François Baldassari

    In the process of porting a blog post from the retired Arduino M0 Pro to Adafruit’s excellent Metro M0 Express, I ran into a few issues and scant amount of documentation. I’m writing this for the next poor soul wrestling with these systems.

  • A Schematic Review Checklist for Firmware Engineers

    by Mark Schulte

    Schematic reviews are a part of the hardware development cycle in many, if not most, hardware development companies. Typically led by the electrical engineering team, it is easy to overlook design issues that will be important to the firmware team. This post tells of few stories of design misses that I have made, and puts some common lessons learned into a checklist for other firmware engineers. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a starting point for a firmware engineer to build their own checklist with the goal of helping teams catch software/hardware interaction bugs earlier in the design cycle when they’re cheaper to fix.

  • Considerations when Building Embedded Databases

    by Chris Merck

    Persisting to flash is a necessary evil for many embedded devices. Let’s take a look at some of the pitfalls and how they may be avoided.