Embedded Development

Here are links to some great technical info on embedded development, including software and hardware engineering.

Hardware engineering

• Commentary: Comply with RoHS in four easy steps (EDN)
• Standards and specs: Of RoHS and rushed standards (IBM)
• CPLD automatically powers itself off (EDN)
• List of Open-Source EDA tools (EETimes)

Software engineering

• A 'C' Test: The 0x10 Best Questions for Would-be Embedded Programmers (Embedded.com)
• Efficient C Code for Eight-Bit MCUs (Embedded.com)
• List of data structures (Wikipedia)
• List of terms relating to algorithms and data structures (Wikipedia)
• Multitasking Alternatives and the Perils of Preemption (Dr. Dobb's Journal)
• comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions

Security engineering

• Security Engineering (on-line book)

Engineering (general)

• The top five engineering hints you'll rarely hear (IBM)
• Five more engineering hints you'll rarely hear (IBM)
• A pox on modern engineering, Part 1 Part 2 (IBM)

Embedded Linux

• Linux initial RAM disk (initrd) overview (IBM)
• Data Extraction Using Linux Text Utilities (IBM)
• Implementing an embedded Linux web app framework (Linuxdevices.com)
• Standards and specs: Not by UNIX alone (IBM)
• Speaking UNIX, Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 (IBM)
• UNIX tips: Productivity tips (IBM)
• Errors: errno in UNIX programs (IBM)
• Unofficial comp.os.linux.development.* FAQ
• The Art of Unix Programming by Eric Steven Raymond (faqs.org copy)
• Explore the Linux memory model (IBM)
• Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition

Hardware development tools (open-source)

• XCircuit (schematic drawing)
• QCad (2D CAD)

Hardware development tools (commercial)

• Cadsoft Eagle (PCB design)
• Altera Quartus II (Linux version available, web-based windows version is free to use (FPGA/CPLD design)

Software development using open-source tools

• Fun with strace and the GDB Debugger (IBM)
• GNU Project Debugger: More fun with GDB (IBM)
• Version control for Linux (IBM)
• Debugging make (IBM)

Magazines

• Michael Gellis' electronics magazine links
• EDN
• EEPN
• EE Times
• Electronic News
• Electronic Design
• Embedded Systems Design/Embedded.com
• electronicsweekly.com
• Dr. Dobb's Journal
• Circuit Cellar (sample issue)
• Nuts & Volts (sample issue)

Books

• Hacker's Delight
• The C Book (free version available to view online)

General purpose libs

• Colin Percival's DPhil libraries
• 256 sources
• Jeff's Source Code
• Numerical Recipes in C (on-line PDF version)
• Boost.org free peer-reviewed portable C++ source libraries

Compression

• tinf (tiny inflate library)
• datacompression.info source code listing

Encryption and security

• LibTomCrypt
  • Yahoo Group
  • Gmane archive
• Brian Gladman's AES and Combined Encryption/Authentication Modes
• Roaming charges: CCM a la mode (IBM)
• The Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA)
• Ron Rivest's Cryptography and Security list
• Introduction to cryptography (7 parts, IBM)
• SSL
  • Implementing SSL on 8-bit micros (Embedded.com)
  • Encryption using OpenSSL's crypto libraries By Vinayak Hegde
  • Secure programming with the OpenSSL API, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (IBM)
  • XySSL: GPL SSL/TLS client source code

Hashing, PRNGs and LFSRs

• Hashing
  • MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm
    • RFC 1321 - The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm
    • MD5 Homepage (unofficial)
    • RFC1321-based (RSA-free) MD5 library
  • SHA1 Message-Digest Algorithm
    • Steve Reid's C implementation
    • updated version of Steve Reid's C implementation
    • SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 in C by Allan Saddi
    • SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 in C by Aaron Gifford
  • Hash table (Wikipedia)
  • Bob Jenkins' A Hash Function for Hash Table Lookup
  • Hash Collision Q & A (cryptography.com)
• Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNG)
  • Mersenne Twister Random Number Generator:
    • Mersenne Twister Home Page
    • Mersenne Twister Random Number Generator
    • Mersenne Twister with improved initialization
    • Mersenne twister
  • Bob Jenkins' ISAAC: a fast cryptographic random number generator
  • Generating random numbers (Embedded.com)
• Online random number generators
  • LavaRnd (originally based on images of lava lamps captured with digital cameras, currently based on closed cover CCD sensor with ultra-high gain)
  • random.org (based on atmospheric noise)
  • Fourmilab 'HotBits' (based on radioactive decay)
  • Quantum Random Bit Generator Service (based on the quantum physical process of photonic emission in semiconductors and subsequent detection by photoelectric effect)
  • EntropyPool (collected entropy from multiple sources)
• Linear Feedback Shift Registers (LFSRs)
  • Shift-Register Stream Ciphers
  • Linear feedback shift register (Wikipedia)
  • Self-shrinking generator (Wikipedia)
  • XAPP052: Efficient Shift Registers, LFSR Counters, and Long Pseudo-Random Sequence Generators (PDF from Xilinx)
  • Linear Feedback Shift Register
  • LFSR
  • Pseudo-Random Number Generation Routine for the MAX765x Microprocessor
  • (Using an LFSR for) Built-in Self-test
  • Understanding Linear Feedback Shift Registers

Communication systems

• Efficiently Coding Communications Protocols in C++ (Embedded.com)
• Inside the uIP Stack (Dr. Dobb's Journal)
• The uIP TCP/IP stack
• The lwIP TCP/IP stack
• The TCP/IP Guide (on-line reference and book)
• Understanding Sockets in Unix, NT, and Java (IBM)
• Beej's Guide to Network Programming
• Character encoding
  • The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets
  • A tutorial on character code issues
  • Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO, chapter 5.9. Character Encoding
  • ASCII charts: chart #1, chart #2
  • ISO Latin 1 Character Entities and HTML Escape Sequence Table
  • Character encoding, ASCII, ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, Unicode, Universal Character Set (Wikipedia)

File systems

• FAT File System Module
• Embedded Filesystems Library

Hardware parts sources

• Digi-Key (click here for the Canadian site)
• Quality Kits
• Olimex
• Pololu Robotics and Electronics
• Alltronics
• SparkFun Electronics
• Robot Room
• American Science & Surplus
• BG Micro
• macetech.com
• Acroname Robotics

Circuits

• http://www.redcircuits.com/
• http://www.circuitdb.com/
• http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/
• http://www.epanorama.net/index.php?index=circuit
• http://www.high-voltage-lab.com/
• http://thomasscarborough.blogspot.com/search/label/Electronics
• http://www.diy-electronic-projects.com/
• http://www.discovercircuits.com/
• http://www.next.gr/
• http://english.cxem.net/
• http://www.electronic-circuits-diagrams.com/
• http://www.educypedia.be/electronics/electronicaopening.htm
• http://www.coolcircuit.com/
• http://www.circuitstoday.com/
• http://www.electronicsforu.com/

Datasheet searching

• All Datasheet
• DatasheetArchive.com
• datasheets.org.uk

Source code archives & search sites

• Google Advanced Code Search
• Codase
• Koders
• Krugle
• Programmers Heaven
• csourcesearch.net

Misc. hardware info

• Hardware Book: The internet's largest free collection of connector pinouts and cable descriptions
• pinouts.ru: Handbook of hardware pinouts, cables schemes and connectors layouts
• AllPinouts: pinout wiki
• Educypedia
• ServoDatabase.com

Misc. embedded links

• Embedded@eurosource.se
• ePanorama.net
• embeddedrelated.com

Misc. info & resources

• On-line ASCII table
• FileFormat.info
• QuickRef.org find programming documentation - fast!
• gotAPI documentation at your fingertips
• Regular-Expressions.info The Premier website about Regular Expressions
• Rosetta Code repository for code examples that go beyond the traditional "Hello World!" example
• Dev Shed Open Source Web Development Tutorials
• The C Library Reference Guide
• Cprogramming.com C and C++ programming language resources
• Wikibooks a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks
• The TCP/IP Guide