Getting fit with embedded systems

IMO, the best simulation tools are the real thing. Get any one of the low cost ARM eval/dev boards from Keil which include a worthy but limited IDE. Usually one picks a simulation tool when the hardware is absent but that excuse is negated with the large bounty of ARM eval/dev boards available.

I have much less experience with AVR but I'm nearly certain you can easily obtain eval boards and dev SW as readily as ARM.

JJS

Thanks for your feedback John. COuld you maybe recommend some good readings that cover that topic in more details? I know there is google but mostly I find here introduction books. I wanna have some "advanced" stuff in this field.

Anyone with some good recommendations?

Cheers Peter

Or look at Luminary Micro -- they have some pretty impressive features on their $50 board.

You should also choose a project to work toward, if you can. A mini sumo robot, a fish-tank thermal control, whatever, just something real. This should motivate you, and give you something to bring along to interviews

-- nothing says "I really build stuff" quicker than pulling something that you built out of your briefcase.

The embedded world is so broad it's hard to pick something representative. What gizmo do you lack that you wish you had? I do a lot of closed-loop control, so the projects that I would recommend are things like an inverted pendulum (fun, but the mechanicals are difficult to whip up from scratch), propeller-on-a-stick (can be done with a potentiometer, a broken toy airplane and a yardstick), a heater controller (mechanically easy, theoretically interesting at quite deep levels, but visually it's dead boring), a motor speed control (interesting if you have a strobe light, but the interest fades quickly unless you're retrofitting a turntable) or other dirt-under-the- fingernails kinds of projects.

Luminary is a small outfit. If interested in the Cortex ARM then SGS has parts now.

AVR is excellent path. Purchase the STK500/600 eval board for $80. Then download the WINAVR package from

I am a high school student, who is doing quite some "theoretic" work with women at the moment. I want to collect some practical experience about sex. Are there any simulation tools that I could use for the learning purposes?

VLV

The AVR Butterfly board is also quite nice for playing around, and it is dirt cheap. The only additional piece of hardware you need is an RS connector that you solder on the board, and a serial port in your computer. Sadly the latter is becoming rare in new computers.

Just don't do it in Boston's Logan airport. They're suspicious of LEDs and things with wires ;).

Pick your project first, then the hardware. The skill is implementing something functional not on how big a chip you can use.

You can a very nice dev kit from raisonance for the ST Cortex Chips. It comes with arm-elf-gcc with an IDE which includes a JTAG debugger with a limit of 32K. It is available for $49 from digikey. Look at

Regards Anton Erasmus

There are crude* simulation tools, but frankly, if you haven't found them by now perhaps you're not destined for that fate?

• boy, _that_ can be interpreted on more than one level!

A wiggler or a byteblaster would probably help.

VLV

PG asked about 'simulation tools' not 'tool stimulation'.

"Peter Glar" skrev i meddelandet news:func1n$tar$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org...

AVR Studio contains a simulator for the AVR, which will simulate both the core and most peripherals.