3 Tips for Building Embedded Software

Building embedded software is the most powerful thing in our opinion. Because embedded software is the brain of any product which has a microcontroller. We can control most things with embedded software. In this article, we are going to give you

1. Making a Modular Library

This is the first tip that will decrease the development time. Modular means reusable and portable software which you can use on most microcontrollers and platforms with changing a little code.

When you start a new project and if there are some libraries that you need to create, then make them modular. After you make them, you can use them on a new project without creating a new one. After a few projects, your development time will decrease rapidly.

But there is a question: How can you make a modular library? There are lots of resources on the internet and we will write an article about that later. But if you are one who likes to learn something from a book, we recommend you to read this book: Reusable Firmware Development: A Practical Approach to APIs, HALs and Drivers

2. Using Version Control System

A Version Control System (VCS) is a system that records changes. For our purpose, it will record changes in the embedded software. Also, you can version them as the name says. If you use VCS, then you can save your work and you can go back any time.

The most known VCS is Git. It is free and open source. You can also upload your code to the internet using GitHub or GitLab. You can also start your project on the Internet and build the project with your team.

If you don't want to upload it to the internet you can create your project on your computer and after installing Git, use the command line tool to version your project. To get more information about Git read the free Pro Git book.

3. Using Note-Taking App

We are people and we cannot save everything in our minds. We need to save important things somewhere. Not taking is one of the most powerful things that will save you time. You can use paper and pencil to do that, but it is a very inefficient way to do that. We cannot carry them everywhere. But we can carry our phones everywhere. So, we should use an app to take notes.

But what is the relationship between not taking and embedded software? The problem with embedded software is that we cannot write every library ourselves. We will need to use some external software and there will be a setup process. And this is one of the things that we should save the setup process somewhere to use for future projects. You should also save some code snippets to use for future developments. For example, you can save a code snippet that converts numbers to strings in the C programming language.

You can use a plain text editor to take notes, but there is a more powerful app which is Notion. You can use it for project management and for note-taking. You can even write code snippets and also you can save files to that platform. It has an app for PC and for mobile. There is an example of a note for a code snippet: