Anyone doing Embedded Programming in here?

[IHateMyJob2004]

Did for 5-10 years. Got sick of the waterfall process in use where every problem was fixed with more process. Just stupidity. They also had the hammer/nail issue.

So, I quit and moved to IT in the same company where things shockingly get done on time and under budget. Well, not late and at the twice the cost.

 

[SamurAchzar]

How appropriate that you should be responding in such a thread with this username. All I can do is to mutter a bitter lol.

 

[Leros]

I absolutely love embedded programming. I love being close to the hardware.

I'm actually forgoing that field so that it won't get ruined and I keep it as a hobby. My professional field is regular programming.

 

[EagleKeeper]

I should have mentioned using peek and poke to write assembly subroutines on a 16k Tandy CoCo. Do I get to come in the clubhouse now? I'm not a girl.

All is forgiven

Now that you are a big boy, you are supposed to bring the girls with you.:whiste:

 

[bignateyk]

I'm an EE and I do embedded hardware design for my day job and embedded software design for my night job (consulting)

 

[Tsaico]

I was for the last four years, but I've moved on to a more general purpose role.

For what it's worth, I went to school for Computer Engineering with an emphasis on VLSI design, so I'm one of those hardware guys that transitioned to software.

Same here, VHDL design. And yes, I was pretty crap programmer and am sure I would have eventually been laid off or fired, so I transitioned to more System Admin and security general role. Since I still have a job, guess I am good enough in that arena.

 

[Modelworks]

Doing it and been doing it since 1994. Embedded hardware programmers are getting harder to find. Nobody wants to do programming that involves having to know electrical engineering and programming. I have worked on cpus ranging from z80 , 8051, 68000, MIPS (oh how I hate thee), AVR, PIC, ARM. Started out doing low level stuff for CRT television control chips , moved to networking gear , then power supply controllers and finally ASICs before I quit a few years to do computer graphics.
Went back to it recently for the extra cash since the market on graphics is a bit slow right now. It is a well paying field but it can be a stressful one as well as you usually have to do a lot of low level stuff you never have to do in regular programming. I have gone to sleep many times thinking about how I could cram just one more instruction into a clock cycle or how to fit that last bit of code into the 4KB of memory I had to work with.

 

[Modelworks]

I've considered buying a gumstix or beagleboard to mess around with embedded programming. Does anyone have experience with that kind of stuff?

If you want to get a feel for it without spending any money you can download some emulators.

A few I like:
8051 simulator , the 8051 is an old chip but still in use. It controlled some of the space shuttles flight computers.
http://www.edsim51.com/

AVR,PIC, Z80, 80xx simulators and some of them have a basic interpreter you can write code with. Limited trial versions but still nice.
http://www.oshonsoft.com/

AVR simulator with tutorials
http://www.amctools.com/vmlab.htm


I tell people to start small , understand what things like registers are in a cpu before trying to tackle a complex processor. You need to know things like that to read datasheets for the processor. If you can't read and understand the datasheets you will be at a loss.

 

[Markey]

Me! I do embedded software design in C for a custom board running a powerPC chip. It goes into our company's communications system.

 

[Kirby]

Anyone buy one of those cheap TI boards they were selling awhile back and actually do something with it?

I took mine out of the box, but haven't touched it since.

 

[Gibson486]

I did it on my first coop. Did not really like it. Would I mind doing it an again? Hell, it beats consulting.

Also, embedded programming is a rather loose definition. All it has do do to be an embedded system is control stuff in real time. If you a PLC/PAC that is not hooked up to an HMI or some other network, it could be an embedded system.

 

[Gibson486]

Anyone buy one of those cheap TI boards they were selling awhile back and actually do something with it?

I took mine out of the box, but haven't touched it since.

well, to do something useful with it, you have to buy one of the add on boards... Otherwise, all you can really do is turn the voltage on or off to control a servo on something.

 

[ussfletcher]

My current internship is for embedded systems, making that two internships for me in this field.