Newbie question: the essence of embedded world!!!

Hi everybody , iam glad to join this cool site

this is my first post here

iam totally newbie in the embedded system area , i have a compute engineering degree and iam deeply interested in advanced programming and software development , advanced to me means something more interesting tha mainstream database programs which i don't like at all but i have bee doing for a couple years.

and when i knew it's time for doing something more interesting i heared o embedded systems world . and i have many wonders about it which i hope can help me find out.

i heared embedded programming needs to be more effecient and accurat since the resources are limited and the platform is specific but also read too many things about design and architecture are far away from m programming and software interests i have had a good theoritical electronics background in college,jus theoritical, but iam not i can be good at electronic circuit design o hardware area in general.

so here are my wonders :

Does writing firmware and embedded development include real programmin challenges? such as algorithmic thinking , maths ? or it is more abou electronic engineering ?

How deep do i need to be good in Electronics and circuit design ? is i more programming or more electronic engineering and circuit design? i mea , is embedded development fun ? like software programming is ? can i focusing only on software stuff in embedded development environmen ? or i always have to get involved in design and architecture ?

Thank you very mych Regards......

Reply to
Akram
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The short answer is yes. Embedded development includes anything form doorbells that make funny noises up to stuff that lands on Mars.

Whether it is fun or not is up to you. You cannot tell before you try it. Many people do find it quite fun.

I would say that you do not need to be an ace in electronics to do embedded development, but without some kind of literacy it would be quite challenging. On the other hand, dabbling with an embedded hobby project is one way to get to know the stuff.

If you just buy one of the many development boards out there, the design and architecture issues will be fixed for you. The main difference between pure software development and embedded one is that in the embedded world you need to deal with bare hardware, i.e. I/O ports, timers, interrupts and so forth.

Get a cheap evaluation board and see for yourself. I am partial to the AVR Butterfly, as it is dirt cheap and has a nice collection of I/O devices, but there are many others as well.

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Pertti
Reply to
Pertti Kellomäki

mean

Some knowledge in electronics sure helps or you will miss the fun part :)

environment

I suggest to start with a cheap development board, a JTAG probe and a fre toolchain. I would start with an ARM7 board, it is not the easiest one bu it is very interesting. Try on the olimex web site and evaluate th LPC-P2148 proto board.

regards, Giovanni

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http://chibios.sourceforge.net/
Reply to
gdisirio

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