For all the aspiring candidates who would like to know what a typical life cycle of an embedded engineer or an Embedded team is, we would like to explain you by giving you live experience of an Embedded team at Emertxe - Bangalore.

The Embedded team for this project consisted of 5 Embedded engineers, 3 Embedded Software developers and 2 Hardware Design engineers, including a TL(Team Lead)

One of the Project Requirements was to develop an Embedded communication system to be connected to Huge Machineries, which will control and communicate with these machines remotely.

contained Ethernet, USB, UART, I2C and SPI protocols, LCD, Keypad, properly fabricated with proper casing. On the Software side, they had to port Linux on this system, develop all the device drivers and other Board Support Packages(BSP) for the complete system to run properly. The biggest challenge faced by the team was to get the project completed in 2.5 months. This timeline looked very difficult and hence required perfect planning and modules released exactly on target time.

The Hardware team had to research and decide the Vendor/Manufacturer of the Processor and all the Hardware Components, which can handle the above requirements and the cost constraints as well.From a set of different processors based on ARM9 core, ATMEL based processor with 180MHZ Clock Speed and 32 MB Flash was selected. All the Hardware vendors were also decided and the BOM(Bill of Materials) were given to the purchase department. One complete week was consumed here.

Once the components were decided, the Hardware team started designing the schematics of the Board. In Parallel, the software team started working on a reference development platform suggested by Hardware team which had the same processor and the relevant peripherals. The software team started with the Board Bring up, OS porting, writing the device drivers and BSP so that they can be ready to test the Hardware Board, as soon as it is ready.

The Hardware team completed design of the Board in 3 weeks, the next step was to do the multi-layer PCB layout, using a CAD tool. This involved designing of the component foot-prints. The design had to accommodate all provisions to avoid EMI and EMC effects. The PCB design work took 10 days after which the final output files were given to PCB manufacturer for the first set of prototypes. The PCB manufacturer took 10 days to deliver the Cards; In-case there were any issues, the project would be delayed by min 10 extra days since the same process has to be repeated again after design team rectifies the problem.

After the Board arrived the Software team had to make the board up running with Linux, the kernel version selected was 2.6x. The OS was flashed on the board with direct pinouts from the board via Serial &/or Ethernet / Network cable. After 2 days of extensive debugging, the processor finally displayed some messages on the monitor which indicated that the Board has booted up. There were problems to reach this state, like issues in soldering, wrong components chosen, slips in schematics. But all were worked-around to get the board booting. Why workaround? Otherwise, fixing few of them may need an extra cycle of 20+ days.

Now the ball was in the court of Embedded Software team. Once the board was up and running, the software team was busy in testing the BSP, Drivers, they had written, along with verifying the hardware.

Since the base platform selected was Linux, and the Hardware team was cautious enough to select the components which already had Linux support, the software team were able to complete their tasks just a couple of days ahead of planned schedule.

The Hardware team had outsourced the job of Casing to a local fabricator. They had to take the PCB's and all the required components that is to be fixed for exact drawing and perfect positioning and easy fixing of the PCBs, Keypad, Connectors that would be enclosed in the Box.

There were lot of anxious, pressured, fun-filled, thrilling moments that were involved in the life cycle of this project. To put down all, a complete novel could be written. This is just a gist of experiences to understand what type of an eco-system a typical Embedded Engineer or an Embedded Team undergoes through.

Article by EMERTXE Technologies, Bangalore