Listen! Do you hear a subtle hum, a buzz of machine intelligence? Embedded systems surround us in our homes, offices, cars and even boats. The 26 billion embedded CPUs sold every year entertain us, optimize fuel economy in our cars, run factories and underlie the very fabric of our civilization. My name is Jack Ganssle (bio) and I'm on a mission to help embedded developers produce better embedded products faster. My weekly column on embedded.com, articles, books, seminars and web publications are all to help you find better ways to build embedded systems... while maximizing the fun of creating new products!

This site is your source for hundreds of practical articles, tips, papers and resources about developing embedded systems.

Free Newsletter - The Embedded Muse

Free biweekly embedded systems newsletter, now in its 16th year, with over 200 issues released. No hype, just down to earth embedded talk, hints, tricks and ideas about better ways to build embedded systems - both hardware and firmware. The latest issue (#242, May 20, 2013) contains comments about fixing hard drives and aging software. Check out the back issues of The Embedded Muse.

Firmware Seminars

Who wouldn't want to double your team's productivity? Reduce bugs? Meet deadlines? Take Jack's one day Better Firmware Faster seminar. Over 5000 of your colleagues are now better developers as a result of this course. You'll learn how to estimate a schedule accurately, thwart schedule-killing bugs, manage reuse, build predictable real-time code, better ways to deal with uniquely embedded problems like reentrancy, heaps, stacks and hardware drivers, and much, much more. It's fast-paced, packed with information you can use today, and a lot of fun. Bring Jack into your facility to get training about embedded systems that will optimize your development efforts.

Expert Witness

From time to time I've been privileged to work as an expert witness. This is a fascinating area of work, as one gets to dive deeply into the technology of some very cool products. Find more information here.

What I'm Reading (May 20, 2013 edition)

Consider the Source - When the tech publications run articles by vendors, engineers suffer.

Government Lab Reveals it has been Operating Quantum Internet - Quantum computing is getting closer.

30 Old Computer Ads - a real flashback for old-timers.

The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard - Turns out, QWERTY may not have been all about slowing typing speed.

Articles and Books

Over the years I've cranked out hundreds of articles about the unique and fascinating subject of embedded systems. Since 2001 I've been writing a weekly column on embedded.com which covers a vast range of embedded subjects. They called it the "Pulse" column, now it is named "Breakpoints," but to me Random Rants is more appropriate. This site has my reviews of many books about embedded systems. And I've written a few books as well.

Cool Tools and Special Reports

Vendors make all sorts of claims about their tools, but real-world experience is much more important. Developers have contributed their opinions about a huge number of embedded systems tools. Submit your own thoughts on tools you like.

From salary surveys to tech articles on debouncing, consulting, floating point approximations, testing RAM, watchdog timers and much, much more - check out these free special reports about embedded issues. The one on debouncing contacts is downloaded about 4,000 times per month.

Last updated 22-May-2013