How To Develop Embedded Software : A Case Study

This case study shows processes, tools, and methods used by embedded system developers. The book's content is derived from the author's 35 years experience developing embedded systems for major corporations. The example project is a digital trombone implemented on an mbed and Arduino compatible, NUCLEO-L432KC board from STMicroelectronics..

This book uses an example project to illustrate each of the steps used to develop a new embedded system program.

System requirements and architecture are provided, followed by methods to estimate level of effort needed to implement them. A simple design methodology shows how to divide the system into cooperating virtual software objects, along with suggestions for their verification. Suggestions are made for coding, debugging, and verifying the virtual objects, as well as integrating them into a working program, and demonstrating the requirements have been met.

Complete source code, developed with the VSCode build environment, is an included extra with the purchase of this ebook. The source code extra is found by clicking the extras button at the bottom of the menu found in the bottom half of your book's Library page on leanpub.

The source code implements a digital trombone, which uses a slide potentiometer to control note frequency, and an air pressure sensor with a tube into which the user blows to make notes and modulate their volume. A spring-loaded on-off switch is used to choose between saw, square, triangle, or sine waveforms. The interrupt driven, buffered DAC output is conveyed to an on-board, 3.5 mm audio jack.

The example program can be built with a free version of the GNU ARM compiler toolset on Windows, Linux, or Mac. The binary code produced can be copied to the NUCLEO-L432KC mbed icon on the desktop. Or the Visual Studio Code program from Microsoft may be used to build, load and debug the program on the target board.