Here are the articles, videos, and tools that we’ve been excited about this March.

We hope you enjoy these links, and we look forward to hearing what you’ve been reading in the comments or on the Interrupt Slack.

Articles & Learning

• Inside .git | Julia Evans
  A wonderful description of the contents of the .git folder, from the always excellent Julia Evans (from the Embedded Artistry monthly newsletter, which is superb!). - Noah

• How to make sure no floating point code is used | MCU on Eclipse
  Floating points in firmware add code size bloat and are often avoided entirely. This blog post details how to ensure that floating points are never included in your code or libraries.

• What’s Inside a Linux Kernel Core Dump
  Nicely detailed description of Linux kernel coredumps. - Noah

• RP2020 Boot Sequence
  The author covers all the steps between booting the Raspberry Pi RP2040 and the main() function call. They wanted to build Swift games for the Playdate - and he succeeded! I didn’t realize how optimized Swift-embedded had become.

• Vulnerability Registry - Zephyr Project
  For those making products using Zephyr and meeting certain qualifications, you can get advanced notifications on vulnerabilities and mitigations. - Eric

• Hacking ESP32 - multiplexing I2C | BastelBaus | Hackaday.io
  Multiplexing I2C by using an extra I/O pin. - Noah

• Rust for Embedded Systems: Current State, Challenges and Open Problems
  A new paper from a group at Purdue about the state of Rust on embedded systems.

• How to add Ethernet port to the Gen 2 Starlink router – Oleg Kutkov personal blog
  Retrofitting an Ethernet port to a Starlink router. - Noah

• Floating-Point Determinism | Random ASCII – tech blog of Bruce Dawson
  A somewhat terrifying article about floating point determinism. - Noah

• Demystifying a very simple TrustZone enabled program on ARM Cortex-M33
  Nice writeup about the anatomy of an ARM TrustZone application. - Noah

• eBook: Making Embedded Systems 2, by Elecia White
  The second edition of Making Embedded Systems is out in paper and ebook. The O’Reilly cover animal is a great-eared nightjar, the perfect blend of floofy ears and serious expression. The new edition has 100 extra pages, 4 new chapters (IoT operations, debugging hard faults, motors, and interrupts), an extremely derpy chicken pressing buttons, and eldritch horrors you can’t find in the index. This was written by our friend Elecia White from Embedded.fm!

• Writing an OLED display driver in MicroZig | Andrew Conlin’s blog
  Interesting writeup on using MicroZig to write a device driver. - Noah

• mcinglis/c-style: My favorite C programming practices.
  A really nice list of C coding style recommendations. - Noah

Projects & Tools

• wagiminator/CH32X035-USB-PD-Tester: USB Power Delivery Testing Device and Variable Power Supply
  USB PD tester based on the low cost CH32X035 RISC-V chip. - Noah

• The cheapest flash microcontroller you can buy is actually an Arm Cortex-M0+ - Jay Carlson
  Another fun, extremely cheap microcontroller from Jay Carlson- this time a surprisingly featureful, and reprogrammable, Cortex-M0.

• Blinky POV and Blinky GRID Programming
  Neat USB PD device- uses a light sensor to read configuration data from a web page, reminds me of this classic soldering kit!

• Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio 📻
  The author demonstrates fifty ways to use a software defined radio (SDR) to tune in signals – locally or from around the world - with a simple USB dongle and antenna kit. - François

• swift-evolution/visions/embedded-swift.md at main · apple/swift-evolution
  Speaking of Swift, this is the “Vision for Embedded Swift.”

• tvlad1234/linux-ch32v003: Linux on a $0.15 RISC-V microcontroller
  Linux on a $0.15 microcontroller. - Noah

• micropython/ports/zephyr at master · micropython/micropython
  I recently learned MicroPython on Zephyr is officially supported- Zephyr supports a lot of different hardware, so this is a neat way to try MicroPython on a large variety of boards. - Noah

• the-aerospace-corporation/satcat5: SatCat5 is a mixed-media Ethernet switch that lets a variety of devices communicate on the same network.
  Surprisingly cool; FPGA Ethernet switch that can work over SPI/UART/I2C. - Recommended by our friend at Golioth, Jonathan Beri

• 3D-Printing/Dorothy at main · alexose/3D-Printing
  A neatly documented LoRa sensor node system (Arduino based). - Noah

News & Announcements

• Laird Connectivity | Laird Connectivity is now Ezurio
  Laird Connectivity has rebranded to Ezurio!

• Version 8.0.0 Released | KiCad EDA
  In case you missed it, Kicad 8 is out! There are tons of great improvements, including new features to the kicad_cli - like running ERC/DRC - nice! - Noah

Upcoming Events

• Embedded World 2024: Visit Memfault at Booth 4-238 in Hall 4
  Embedded World, the world’s leading conference for embedded systems, will be back in Nuremberg, Germany from 9-11 April. Meet the Memfault team at Booth 4-238 (Hall 4)for a live demo of Memfault’s embedded observability platform and newest product features, grab some limited edition swag, and enter our daily raffle where we’re giving away cool prizes like Panic Playdates. We will have special items for Interrupt community members! Click here to reserve your swag and let us know you’ll be swinging by the booth.

• Embedded Open Source Summit
  We’ll be at #EmbeddedOSSummit, will you? Embedded Open Source Summit takes place April 16-18 in Seattle and is a key conference for Open Source developers and embedded enthusiasts. Swing by Memfault’s booth (#E29) and be sure to catch the session led by our Field CTO, Thomas Sarlandie, on “Unwrap()Ing Rust on Embedded Linux” at 9:55am PDT on Wednesday, April 17.