Follow our illustrated blog on Embedded Software Architecture

How to build a hybrid solar/wind energy harvester?

Archives for January 2014

Beware of premature optimization

One should only write optimized code? No, one should not write only optimized code. One should write maintainable and readable code, which adheres to the KISS principle. Depending on the foreseeable scenario, certain optimizations could be introduced in order to meet the performance requirements. The dangers of early optimization “fever” are loosing yourself in the […]

Share

4 reasons you should stay away from Almost-Scrum

“Almost-Scrum” or what is also known more generally speaking as the Avalanche Model is not a good project approach to find yourself in with your development team. On Wiki you’ll find the following description: “The Avalanche model is a Software Engineering project management anti-pattern, it is a combination of a sequential process such as the […]

Share

Object-orientation in C — Part 1

Object-orientation Object-orientation is about classes and objects. A class is an abstract data type: data type: because it defines a new type to work with by providing data and operations on this data, but also abstract: because it encapsulates this data and hides implementation details behind an hopefully nice and clean interface. An object then […]

Share

5 reasons why embedded device development projects fail

Missing stakeholder support  “The project is defined, so implement it and roll it out” does not work well in human organizations. Every entity and person has its own target, purpose and agenda. That is the way the world works, so one must take into account the process (and the time) it takes to get all […]

Share

To smarter battery charging

Each battery(bank) has properties such as voltage and maximum load amperage and It also behaves differently (in our context of energy harvesting) depending on its state of charge (empty, half, full). To charge a battery efficiently and safely the (average) voltage and (average) load current must be measured, filtered and checked continuously. First thing a […]

Share