• Step-through debugging with no debugger on Cortex-M

    by Chris Coleman

    This week we explore how to debug running systems with ARM Cortex-M’s DebugMonitor exception handler. We cover how to configure the MCU to operate in this mode and walk through an example of installing breakpoints and single-stepping on a running device!

  • How to Build Drivers for Zephyr

    by Jared Wolff

    In this post, I’ll go over some of the nuances related to creating drivers for your peripherals on Zephyr. We’ll talk about Device Tree organization, Kconfig, and CMakeLists.txt files. By the end, you should have an idea on how to tackle your own Zephyr driver aspirations!

  • Firmware Testing with Renode and GitHub Actions

    by Tyler Hoffman

    In this post, I cover what it takes to build a simple firmware for use with Renode, how to build and administer tests with Robot Framework, and how to run these tests within GitHub’s continuous integration system.

  • What we've been reading in June

    by Tyler Hoffman

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

  • Device Firmware Update Cookbook

    by François Baldassari

    In this post, I share the device firmware update architecture I would implement knowing everything I know now. I also highlight a few design patterns that are particularly useful. The example comes with a fully functional example of a multi-stage bootloader with DFU functionality.

  • How do breakpoints even work?

    by Chris Coleman

    In this article, we will discuss the basic types of breakpoints (hardware and software) and how they are utilized by the GNU Project Debugger, GDB. We will then explore how to configure hardware breakpoints on an ARM Cortex-M MCU using the Flash Patch and Breakpoint Unit (FPB) and examine a real-world configuration with an example application.

  • Building a Tiny CLI Shell for Tiny Firmware

    by Tyler Hoffman

    In this post, we go over why an embedded firmware should include a command-line shell interface, common use cases for it, how to build and extend one, and cover common issues that developers run into while build and maintaining one. The shell we will build will work over a UART serial port, which should make it applicable to most embedded systems.

  • Profiling Firmware on Cortex-M

    by François Baldassari

    In this post, we explore different techniques that can be used to profile firmware applications running on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. To profile our Mandelbrot application on STM32, we start with a naive debugger-based sampling method, and eventually discover ITM, DWT cycle counters, and more!