🖥 LVGL with ESP32 TFT LCD Touchscreen Display (Arduino IDE)

In this guide, you'll learn to use the LVGL (Light and Versatile Graphics Library) with a 2.8 inch TFT LCD touchscreen display and an ESP32 board using the ♾ Arduino IDE. The guide covers wiring the display to the ESP32, understanding the SPI communication protocol, and utilizing the ILI9341 driver.

You'll explore LVGL's features, including creating graphical user interfaces with buttons, sliders, images, and animations. By following the detailed instructions, you'll gain the skills to develop sophisticated, interactive displays for your microcontroller projects.

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#articles #arduino #esp32

💻 Qt vs. Flutter: Which Framework is Right for Your Embedded Project?

Choosing between Qt and Flutter for embedded project development depends on the specific technical needs of the project.

Qt, built on C++, excels in native performance and efficiency, making it ideal for complex, high-performance applications. It offers extensive libraries and robust community support, catering to projects that require sophisticated functionalities and direct hardware access, such as medical devices and low-end hardware without GPU support.

On the other hand, Flutter focuses on rapid development and cost-effectiveness, utilizing Dart for an accessible programming experience. Key features like hot reload enable quick iteration, and a single codebase ensures consistent UI across platforms.

To sum up, Qt is suited for intricate, performance-critical applications, while Flutter is ideal for projects prioritizing speed, cost-efficiency, and cross-platform consistency.

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🤖 ESP32 and ESP8266: Timer Interrupts with MicroPython

This tutorial guides you through using timer interrupts with the 🇨🇳 ESP32/ESP8266 boards programmed in MicroPython. You’ll learn to schedule and execute tasks at specified intervals or delays using timer interrupts, which rely on the board's hardware timer.

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💻 Considerations when Building Embedded Databases

When building embedded databases, there are several key considerations to ensure reliable and efficient data management. In particular, this article highlights the importance of understanding non-volatile storage (NVS) challenges, such as data corruption and system compatibility.

It also explores various existing database implementations and custom solutions, offering practical advice for optimizing storage and managing records in embedded systems. By focusing on these aspects, developers can create durable and maintainable embedded applications that perform reliably under real-world conditions.

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💻 Metrics for Measuring Semiconductor Progress Beyond Moore's Law

This article challenges the relevance of Moore's Law in measuring semiconductor progress, advocating for a new metric that accurately reflects technological advancements. Initially tied to transistor dimensions, Moore's Law's rigid node system no longer aligns with actual device features, leading to confusion and stagnation in innovation.

Proposed alternatives, like the GMT method and LMC metric, focus on fundamental device characteristics and overall system improvements rather than arbitrary node numbers. These metrics promise a more accurate reflection of semiconductor evolution, crucial for guiding future advancements in computing technology beyond current lithographic limits.

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💻 Expanding RP2040 Memory: Using QSPI RAM with RP2040's SSI in read-write mode

The article discusses a useful lifehack for expanding the memory of the 🍓 RP2040 microcontroller. The RP2040 typically supports flash XIP (eXecute In Place), which allows for executing code directly from external flash memory, but it only supports read and execute operations, not writes.

The author overcomes this limitation by employing a combination of hardware (OR and NOT gates) and software (a custom HardFault handler) to copy code from flash to RAM during boot, then switch the RP2040 to execute from RAM, effectively making it behave like real memory.

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#articles #raspberry #RP2040

🖥 Preparing for C++26: A Look Back at Major Features Since C++11

This article provides an overview of the major features added to C++ from C++11 through to the upcoming C++26. It explains key changes like auto type deduction, lambda expressions, and smart pointers, and covers later enhancements like concepts, ranges, and modules. You'll find examples and explanations that show how these features work and what they mean for modern C++ development.

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🤦‍♂️ 5 Techniques to Simulate Embedded Software

Hardware often arrives late in product development, but embedded systems engineers can use simulation techniques to test and validate software without physical hardware. These methods accelerate development and improve product reliability.

💻 Virtual Hardware (ISS): Simulates microcontrollers at the instruction level, allowing early software validation. Challenges include limited peripheral support and cost considerations.

💻 Functional Simulation: Focuses on application functionality and business logic without low-level hardware dependencies, enabling early customer feedback and reducing rework costs.

💻 Hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) Simulation: Integrates real hardware interfaces to validate software with virtualized sensors and actuators, ensuring robustness in diverse scenarios.

🔨 System-level Simulation: Simulates entire systems to test interactions comprehensively, suitable for high-reliability applications despite being time-consuming and costly.

📊 Behavioral Simulation: Models high-level system behavior, such as state machines, aiding in system requirement validation and iterative design improvements.

Implementing these techniques enhances development efficiency, accelerates time to market, and reduces costs by identifying and fixing issues early in the development cycle. Start with basic simulations like functional and behavioral approaches to maximize ROI and project success.

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💻 Improving Embedded Systems with Design-by-Contract

Design-by-Contract (DbC) is a method that helps embedded software developers reduce the time spent debugging by ensuring each function has well-defined pre-conditions, post-conditions, side effects, and invariants. This approach creates "contracts" that must be followed for a function to operate properly, outlining what must be true before and after a function executes.

To enforce these contracts, developers can use assertions, which check that the conditions are met at runtime. If a condition isn't satisfied, the assertion signals a defect, making it easier to catch errors early. Assertions aren't used for error handling but for defect detection, ensuring that the system behaves as expected when calling functions or components.

// Example of DbC using assertions
void Dio_Init(DioConfig_t const* const Config)
{
  assert(sizeof(Config) > 0);
  assert(NUMBER_OF_CHANNELS_PER_PORT > 0);
  assert(NUMBER_OF_PORTS > 0);
  assert(Mcu_ClockState(GPIO) == true);

  // The rest of the function
}

DbC can be implemented simply, often through code documentation tools like 😹 Doxygen or directly within the code using assertions. While there may be a slight performance impact, developers can disable assertions before final deployment if necessary. Overall, DbC helps improve software quality, decreases debugging time, and enhances the reliability of embedded systems.

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👩‍💻 Kickstart Your Raspberry Pi Pico with VS Code

Setting up a development environment for the 🍓 Raspberry Pi Pico can be daunting, especially with the variety of languages and tools available. While MicroPython and CircuitPython simplify things for beginners, using C/C++ offers greater control and flexibility—at the cost of a more complex setup process.

Fortunately, Raspberry Pi's official extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a game-changer, making it easier than ever to get started with C/C++ on the Pico. This guide will give you a quick walk though the steps needed to start embedded development with Pico on Windows environment.

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💻 Embedded System Simulations: Techniques and Tools for Realistic Testing

This article explores advanced techniques for simulating embedded systems, helping developers streamline testing and development. Readers will learn about leveraging virtual hardware simulators, such as Wokwi, Renode, and QEMU, which mimic microcontrollers and external components with varying levels of fidelity. It discusses how these tools can model real-world hardware interactions and evaluates their ease of use, integration with build systems, and support for specific microcontrollers.

The article also covers the use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to enhance simulation realism and usability. Developers can transition from text-based inputs and outputs to interactive dashboards with buttons, sliders, gauges, and graphs. This makes simulations more intuitive, akin to operating a physical device, while improving debugging and control capabilities.

More information:
🔗 Part 1: Simple Simulations with printf
🔗 Part 2: Simulations with Virtual Hardware and GUIs

#articles #design

🤦‍♂️ Write Better Code with Block Diagrams and Flowcharts

This article explores how software developers can enhance their coding processes using block diagrams and flowcharts. You will learn how these graphical aids can clarify problem-solving, improve modular design, and facilitate understanding of complex systems. The article also highlights tools like Mermaid and PlantUML, providing practical tips for integrating these techniques into coding workflows to make code easier to write, debug, and comprehend.

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©️ Writing a simple pool allocator in C

This article provides a detailed guide on writing a simple pool allocator in C, a memory management technique that offers faster allocation and deallocation compared to traditional malloc by using fixed-size memory chunks.

This technique is especially useful when writing embedded firmware where the RAM is limited and you need to save resources. New readers will learn how to implement a basic pool allocator, including creating, expanding, and managing memory pools, as well as optimizing performance with constant-time operations.

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©️ Fixing C strings

This article explores an alternative to traditional null-terminated C strings, which are notorious for being error-prone and unsafe.

The author introduces a safer string implementation using two structures: struct str (for immutable strings) and struct str_buf (for mutable string buffers). These structures store both the string data and its length, eliminating common issues like buffer overflows and off-by-one errors.

The article provides practical examples of how to create, manipulate, and use these strings, emphasizing readability, correctness, and safety.

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💍 Open Ring - Open-Source Smart Ring

This series follows the development of Open Ring — an open-source Smart Ring engineered to pack full wireless connectivity, sensing, haptics, and charging into a tiny, finger-sized wearable. Parts 1 and 2 uncover both the early research phase and the deep hardware design decisions that make such a compact device possible.

Key features of the project:
➡️Provides market research, product teardowns, and early prototyping insights
➡️Rigid-flex PCB design enabling ultra-thin construction and dense component placement
➡️Detailed exploration of BLE SoC selection, antenna engineering, and RF constraints
➡️Power management, curved batteries, and a fully custom wireless charging system
➡️Scalable design for multiple ring sizes with reusable PCB sections
➡️Mutual-capacitance touch sensing paired with dual-MCU control for gesture input
➡️Miniaturized haptic feedback achieved through tiny motors boosted by a high-capacity capacitor bank

With the first two parts laying out both the research journey and the hardware engineering behind Open Ring, the series gives a clear and honest look at what it takes to turn a small idea into a real piece of wearable tech. The project has its own 😹 GitHub repository. The project is still in progress, and the upcoming Part 3 will dive into the firmware that brings all of this hardware to life.

More information:
🔗 Part 1: Research and Prototype
🔗 Part 2: Hardware Design

#projects #articles #smart_ring

📊 Semiconductor Sovereignty Policies (2025 Report)

Governments are accelerating local semiconductor manufacturing to reduce foreign dependency and geopolitical risk, including lower-power IoT chips. Policies now treat these technologies as critical digital infrastructure, expanding export controls to cover microcontrollers, connectivity, sensors, and security chips. Notable examples include the following:

➡️US – The CHIPS and Science Act allocated $52.7 billion to boost domestic manufacturing and R&D. Further, the government has expanded funding to semiconductor production companies like Intel, TSMC, and Samsung.

➡️China – China has countered the US’s actions with a $47.5 billion “Big Fund” to boost domestic chipmaking and close its technology gap by 2030.

➡️Japan – The government of Japan has committed approximately $65 billion by 2030 to expand its semiconductor and AI sectors, supporting domestic fabs and R&D partnerships.

➡️South Korea – Republic of Korea officials announced a $19 billion support package in 2024 to strengthen its chip supply chain and SME competitiveness.

➡️EU – Leading national efforts include Italy’s €10 billion investment to become one of the largest microelectronics producers in Europe and the Netherlands’ €2.5 billion Brainport Eindhoven initiative, which aims to enhance collaboration between businesses, academia, and governments for technological development, including semiconductors.

Semiconductor localization is becoming a strategic priority as countries aim for more resilient, self-sufficient IoT and tech supply chains. These investments signal a long-term shift toward regional chip ecosystems and reduced foreign dependency.

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💻 15 Single Board Computers Tested in 2025: Key Trends and Standout Boards

The article reviews 15 single-board computers (SBCs) released in 2025 from eight manufacturers using processors from vendors such as Rockchip, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and others. Prices ranged from $42 to $590, highlighting the growing diversity and maturity of the SBC market. The boards span several categories, including budget hobbyist devices, mid-range development boards, and high-end systems designed for specialized workloads.

The budget category under $50 included six boards with both ARM and RISC-V architectures. The Radxa Cubie A7A stood out due to its strong performance and 6GB LPDDR5 memory for only $45, outperforming other boards in the price tier.

In the $50–$100 range, the Radxa Dragon Q6A attracted attention with a Qualcomm QCS6490 processor and performance comparable to a Raspberry Pi 5 at $70. Networking-focused boards like the Banana Pi R4 targeted router and OpenWrt applications rather than general computing.

In the high-end segment, boards using the new CIX P1 SoC—such as the Radxa Orion O6N and Orange Pi 6 Plus—achieved the highest multi-core benchmark results, while the Raspberry Pi 500+ offered a refined keyboard-integrated design with 16GB RAM and NVMe support.

Overall, 2025 demonstrated rapid diversification in the SBC ecosystem. New competitors such as Qualcomm and CIX introduced powerful hardware, while RISC-V continued progressing but remained behind ARM in performance. With expanding price ranges and specialized devices for networking and AI workloads, the SBC market is becoming broader and more competitive, suggesting continued innovation in the coming years.

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👩‍💻 Understanding the Linux Kernel: The Linux Kernel Startup

This article explains how the Linux kernel starts up after a computer is powered on, focusing on the x86_64 architecture. It walks through the boot process step by step, from the bootloader handing control to the kernel to the early initialization of memory, hardware, and CPU features.

Complex topics such as page tables, interrupts, memory encryption, KASLR, and microcode updates are explained in simple and accessible language with creative examples, like comparing the boot process to setting up a space colony.

The article is written in a beginner-friendly style, making difficult low-level operating system concepts easier to understand and more interesting to read. Overall, it serves as an engaging introduction to what happens behind the scenes when Linux boots up and prepares the system to run.

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📊 Report: Inside the $585 billion embedded systems market

The embedded systems market was worth an estimated $585 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach about $857 billion by 2032. Automotive, mobility, industrial, and robotics applications account for more than half of demand, while embedded systems also support billions of connected IoT devices.

Development is becoming faster and more flexible through unified toolchains, coding agents, and virtual hardware that allows software to be tested before physical boards are available. At the same time, memory capacity, bandwidth, availability, and cost can limit performance; new silicon can be difficult to integrate into existing development environments; and connected products require security updates, vulnerability management, and compliance throughout their operational lifetime.

Overall, embedded systems are becoming more intelligent, connected, and complex, creating new possibilities while increasing engineering demands. The report therefore emphasizes system-level decisions, where hardware, memory, software, development tools, deployment, and security need to be considered together rather than separately.

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