What set of skills does an embedded system engineer need?
Based on my almost 40 years of working in the embedded systems field, these are - IMHO - the minimum “must have” skills/knowledge:A good understanding of digital and small signal analog electronics.Ability to read and understand schematics.Ability to effectively use a Volt/Ohm meter and an Oscilloscope.Ability to perform at least basic electronics debugging/troubleshooting.Competency in at least one assembly language.Competency in the ‘C’ programming language.A good understanding of microprocessor internals (mostly the registers).An understanding of memory regions, and their uses (heap, stack, IVT, code).Working with hexadecimal numbers and hexadecimal math.A very good understanding of boolean math (logic).An excellent knowledge of what interrupts are and how they work in code.An understanding of the different kinds of memory (RAM, ROM, Flash), the differences between them and how they are read, written, accessed.An understanding of multi-tasking (in the embedded world we use the original term “multi-tasking”. The term “multi-threaded” was a term somebody made up later to mean the exact same thing. What others call “threads” we have called “tasks” since the 1970s).Ability to use a debugger to perform at least simple operations such as setting breakpoints, single stepping, examining variable values, examining memory, examining registers - and understanding the when to enable and disable interrupts when single stepping using a debugger.Ability to debug multi-tasking code.The ability to read and understand datasheets, and produce driver code for a given device based on the information contained in its datasheet.Understanding the advantages & disadvantages of using a foreground loop with interrupts vs. using a multi-tasking kernel.Developing code to run under an RTOS (Real Time Operating System), and how to use semaphores, mutexes, queues, inter-task communications.How to develop and debug code for peripherals such as UARTs, A/D & D/A converters, timers, PWM generation from a timer, real-time clocks, etc.How to develop and debug code for communications using RS-232 (and it’s variants), SPI, I2C, and parallel data ports.How to develop and debug code with stacks, queues, linked-lists, and other common data constructs.A good understanding of DMA (Direct Memory Access), and how to implement it for systems which have DMA capability.
Which engineer designs smartphones?
SO MANY! broadly speaking a smartphone is combination of many things so it is obvious that several types of engineers from various fields must be working together to build a smartphone. Practically speaking there is no engineering stream which is solely started to teach people how to build smart phones, although there are several streams of engineering which enable us to build any great product from smartphone, smart TV & many more. There are many universities which offer Design & Architectural level studies at master program level (which are yet again higher level studies of SW or HW engineering). In short i can try and elaborate on the sequence of roles of various engineers: 1. Systems design engineering (To build/choose/edit the already known architecture)2. Electronics engineering (To implement the 'design' in practical way such as building & dealing with electronics board & circuit. It involve Logic-Design & Physical-Design phases) 3. Electrical engineering (i guess involvement of this stream kicks in when the topic is display/screen unit, power unit, battery levels, system sleep or standby states etc)4. Software engineering (Its involvement starts from OS installation, application development, App maintenance, writing code or say device-drivers for various peripherals which are part of the device. Example: writing code for device-driver of PCI bus etc.) There are many more fields which are sort of branches of the above mentioned base fields such as: Firmware Engineering which is covered and taught in SW and Electronics streams both (as it deals with both HW and SW both). I hope it helps, thanks for your time!! :)
What are the main differences between wired and wireless communications?
Wired NetworkAs we know "wired" is the term refers to any physical medium consisting of cables. The cables can be copper wire, twisted pair or fiber optic. Wired network is used to carry different forms of electrical signals from one end to the other. Mostly in wired network one internet connection is being taken using T1 line, cable modem or using any other means. This connection is shared among multiple devices using wired network concept.EXAMPLE #1: LAN (Local Area Network): This network consists of ethernet cards housed in PCs or laptops. These cards are connected using ethernet cables. The data flows between these cards. For small wired network router is used to connect few number of desktop or laptop computers. In order to increase the network coverage for more number of systems multiple switches and routers are used.Wireless NetworkAs we know "Wireless" is the term refers to medium made of electromagnetic waves (i.e. EM Waves) or infrared waves. All the wireless devices will have antenna or sensors. Typical wireless devices include cellular mobile, wireless sensors, TV remote, satellite disc receiver, laptops with WLAN card etc. Wireless network does not use wires for data or voice communication; it uses radio frequency waves as mentioned above. The other examples are fiber optic communication link and broadband ADSL etc.EXAMPLES: 1. Outdoor cellular technologies such as GSM, CDMA, WiMAX, LTE, Satellite etc.2. Indoor wireless technologies such as Wireless LAN(or WiFi), Bluetooth, IrDA, Zigbee, Zwave etc.
How do I increase performance of my android cell phone?
Hi, let's start with basic steps...1) Check your phone storage, for how much it's free. There's always need of few Gigs of space to run your android system efficiently. May it be 1 or 2 or 4 Gigs of space should always be free. If it has 8 GB internal storage than ensure around 1 Gigs of space is free. 3 to 4 Gigs for 16 GB internal and so on. Transfer your most media to SD card if possible.2) After ensuring internal storage, clean up your RAM. If you don't find any option regarding, use third party softwares, like SD MAID, ALL-IN ONE TOOLBOX.After cleaning RAM, it will always stuck up again so you'll need to clean it frequently. Using softwares you'll also find some applications running behind, stop those apps and prevent them to wake up automatically. Also have habit to kill apps when not in use. Follow every day to switch off your mobile for 5 to 10 minutes when not in use in 24 hours which also will add up performance. Try these and let me know it worked for you or not.