I was a late adopter of podcasts, but I came to like them a lot. They are much more relaxing than reading articles or watching videos after a busy day at work with strained eyes and visual cortex. In addition, they give me a linear stream to follow, which is also relaxing compared to hypertext with a lot of links and pointers to divert my attention. In fact, if I’m really tired, a podcast lulls me nicely to a nap, a trait I had only experienced with books before. And I can also combine podcasts with some manual work like washing the dishes. Finally, it’s a not-yet-completely-monopolized part of the media, so I can find some ad-free good content directly from experts working in the fields I’m interested in. I learned a lot from the podcasts in the last 4-5 years, and I would recommend them to any software architect.

So here some of the podcasts I listen to regularly, in a bliki fashion I intend to update the list over time. Continue reading Podcasts I like →

Embedded systems – being embedded – talk to their environment quite intensively. And nowadays, as system complexity has increased, the environment doesn’t only consist of simple sensors and actuators which one could talk to via ADCs, DACs, PWMs or GPIOs; but of more complex peripherals to which the embedded systems talks via some protocols such as CAN, I2C/SMBus, SPI, EIA-232/422/485 and so on.^[1]I can recommend John Catsoulis’ book Designing Embedded Systems for a walkthrough of these interfaces.

These protocols provide the design for the physical layer and some data link control layer. So, one has to implement his own design for the remaining layers if they are needed by the specific requirements. In my experience, development teams tend to underestimate the requirements on the protocols^[2]“It’s just two microcontrollers talking.”, so high costs and delays occur when protocol designs – which are architectural – are being amended in later phases of projects. Continue reading Checklist for embedded communication →