I love my job as an embedded software engineer. However, I am a Compute Science guy by education so when it comes to building actual hardware I have to make do with evaluation boards, bread boards and jumper wires. The last time I attempted to solder anything was way back when dinosaurs ruled the land (i.e. through hole parts) – and it did not go well ;-).

The picture below is my ‘hardware setup’ for my latest project which is a new book titled: The Embedded Project Cookbook: A Step-by-Step Guide for Microcontrollers Projects. The book is a companion to my previous book: Patterns in the Machine: A Software Engineering Guide to Embedded Development, and will be published by Apress later this year.

The setup is for the book’s example “GM6000 Digital Heater Controller“. In addition to source code, the book includes processes and documents for: requirements, software development plan, software architecture, detailed design, code reviews, etc. – everything a software developer needs to run a successful commercial embedded project. The software that is running in the picture is the example engineering test application that would be used to test and validate the hardware.