Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software

This is the best introductory book on embedded systems programming I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of them ! Dec 2018 update : I want to elaborate on that a bit since I have been looking for good books on the topic for many years and this is still the best one I have found. I really liked the specific audience this book is aimed at. It does not try to explain the C programming language or how an "if statement" works or any basics like that, there are plenty of books and online tutorials on how to do that after all. What it does do is cover extremely well the parts of C programming which is DIFFERENT when you work on an embedded system, so the standard C tutorials you will find on the web will explain the semantics for you but will not warn you about how this tends to go wrong specifically in embedded systems. The book is quite thorough so it can also teach even very experienced embedded engineers a thing or two which may be missing from their education - I liked the section on Taylor Series as an example of this. The main areas of focus I felt were also well chosen, start with Architecture and Design first, Basic I/O and Timers, Program Structure, Peripherals, Boot Loaders, Optimization, a very important chapter on Math and then Power Saving. I think that is a great list of topics where approaching them on an embedded system is really very different from doing this on a Laptop or PC running an operating system.

So far, it's a pretty good read. A lot of the examples are "silly," unreal things but still provide some information. Other examples are very good. Mostly pseudocode, but there is also a lot of C and diagrams. I am a "scientific-research oriented" computer scientist (M.S) that recently ended up as an embedded engineer for a company. So, there is a learning curve. This book is pretty good at filling that gap, sometimes it is too simplistic, other times it is just right. But it leans toward the embedded-ignorant while still maintaining a decent technical level. Generally expects the reader to have at least an inclination in technical matters; you need to know a few things about computers before reading this book. It's occasional that they don't sufficiently explain something, however, note the five stars. Recommend pairing it with the Embedded Hardware book by O'Reilly if you need a stronger background on embedded systems / hardware. Now about halfway through and still recommend. Focuses more on understanding concepts than a specific language on a specific OS. Usually uses pseudocode. and black box relationship diagrams.

There's two sides to the embedded coin - hardware and software. On bigger projects, there's often a team of hardware guys and a team of software guys discriminately working on their respective sides. Yin and yang. This book is written for people who want to be the software guys. There's a chapter about hardware and how to read a datasheet and other things that will help a software guy work well with a hardware guy. There's discussions on peripherals and common embedded protocols and other embedded applications. The author assumes the reader knows a decent amount about software. As a hardware guy who was looking into learning more about embedded software, I still took quite a bit from this book. In particular, liked the discussion on state machines and communication protocols. The author's casual tone kept typically-dry material interesting. I only wish this book was longer and went into more depth. I'd reccommend checking out the author's podcast on embedded systems - just seach for "embedded.fm".

20 years on from Michael Barr's book on programming embedded systems, we finally have an updated version (well, kind of). Elicia's book is full of real world examples and practical advice, and makes for a quick read. Embedded systems are typically built for a specific set of custom requirements, and are, therefore, all different. That said, they also have a lot in common (IO, interrupts, timers etc. etc.), and this book provides examples of how these things can be implemented. You may be disappointed if you're buying this book to learn about design patterns. She also skips over some other important topics and refers you to a further reading list. So, if you need to know about using an RTOS, or you want details on threading (for example) you may need to look elsewhere. All in all this book provides a good introduction to embedded systems, and contains some great tips for those of us who already work on similar projects.

Covers a lot of important topics that every embedded engineer should know. This is a great book in that it gives you background knowledge of things you need to know or go out and learn without getting bogged down with too many details. The idea of describing design patterns is a good one, though some of them seem a little too abstract and like they're trying too hard (like factory patterns) to formalize ideas into some universal pattern or structure. The fact there is a math section and a low power section near the end is really cool and very useful. My main issue with this book is that there are several errata (many are listed on the publisher website) that are known about but they have not bothered doing a reprint. Another issue is that some things are not explained enough so you cant tell if it is an error or intentional. For example in the bootloaders section there is a function pointer that gets cast and set to a static address. However, as well as the casting there is a dereference of the address before assigning to the function pointer which is not explained. Overall though, I highly recommend this book, plus the author comes across as a nice and cool person.

excellent overview of embedded development! perfect for newbies looking to understand what it's all about - and existing embedded devs looking for a reference / refresher... In addition to covering system architecture - it also covers real-world stuff like: -Why some math operations are slow on microcontrollers (and how you can work around that) -How to make a power budget -How to read a spec sheet -How to debug things -How interrupts work This book gets pretty technical - but manages to do so without being brutal / off-putting. It's a fake-it-till-you-make-it world... If you can figure out how to load sample code on an Arduino - studying this book might be enough to convince yourself (and maybe a startup) - that you can do embedded development professionally. If there's anything this book doesn't cover in-depth it might be stuff related to "realtime" (RTOS) / concurrency. Highly recommended!

Excellent book on the subject! It's well-written, has very useful information, and if you are job hunting in this area, even has interview questions...and descriptions of how the author evaluates responses to them, at the end of each chapter. Very interesting view into the mind of a technical manager there! I'm new to embedded programming, but not to programming in general. I've done device drivers for larger systems, worked with OS code, etc., so many of the concepts weren't new to me, but enough were that I learned a lot from this one. The writing style made it enjoyable to read as well. Highly recommended!

I'm about half way through the book. The first third has a lot of programming examples, in C, and C!! to illustrate the basics of using micro-controllers to control devices, and read sensors. Then she starts doing a lot of hand waving when talking about more advanced subjects. At least she gives references for further reading. In C, and most other programming languages, Bit 0 is the first bit, and Bit 3 is the fourth bit. In one of her examples, she says Bit 3 is the 3rd bit.