5 ECHas material

Embedded Software

Real-time programming in C for resource-constrained systems — from polling loops to a full RTOS, applied to a Raspberry Pi Pico robot.

Download course · 53 MB

Lectures: 10
Exams: 9
Solutions: 0
Notes: 0
Textbooks: 1
Total: 27 · 53 MB

Was CSE2425, a Systems-variant course. The variant system no longer exists; ES survives as a free elective.

What it covers

C fundamentals for embedded contexts: pointers, direct memory management, bitwise operations, finite state machines
Software architecture progression: Round-Robin → Round-Robin with Interrupts → Function-Queue-Scheduling → full RTOS
RTOS internals: task lifecycle (Running/Ready/Blocked), priority-based preemptive scheduling, semaphores, reentrancy, priority inversion, deadlock
Additional RTOS services: message queues, mailboxes, pipes, event flags, fixed-size-buffer memory management
Hands-on: Raspberry Pi Pico H (RP2040, dual-core Cortex-M0+) robot — line following, obstacle detection, sensor integration
Introductory Embedded ML (TinyML): pruning, quantization, knowledge distillation

Assessment

50% final exam, 50% labs (1/3 hashmap assignment, 2/3 robot project) — each component needs a minimum of 5.0 independently, no compensation between exam and lab. Exam is closed-book, True/False plus open questions, covering Simon's textbook, Lee's "Embedded Software" paper, and lecture material. RTOS concepts historically dominate the exam (roughly a third of questions).

Worth knowing

The exam's True/False format punishes vague understanding — it's built to catch plausible-but-wrong statements (e.g. a task transitioning directly BLOCKED → RUNNING instead of via READY). Precision over gist.
The robot project is the single heaviest-weighted deliverable after the exam (≈33% of the final grade) — treat it as non-negotiable, not a side lab.
Development is cross-compilation heavy: VS Code with the Pico extension, GCC, GDB, Valgrind.
No dedicated notes file in this folder — lecture slides and past exams are the primary study material.

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ES5 knowledge filesSystem prompt

Lectures · 10

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Exams · 9

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Endterm 2019Endterms161 KB

Endterm 2020Endterms152 KB

Endterm 2022Endterms146 KB

Endterm 2023Endterms133 KB

Endterm 2024Endterms770 KB

Endterm 2025Endterms832 KB

Midterm 2019Midterms191 KB

Midterm 2022 SolutionsMidterms112 KB

Midterm 2023Midterms171 KB

Textbooks · 1

Zip

An Embedded Software Primer18 MB

What it covers

C fundamentals for embedded contexts: pointers, direct memory management, bitwise operations, finite state machines

Software architecture progression: Round-Robin → Round-Robin with Interrupts → Function-Queue-Scheduling → full RTOS

RTOS internals: task lifecycle (Running/Ready/Blocked), priority-based preemptive scheduling, semaphores, reentrancy, priority inversion, deadlock

Additional RTOS services: message queues, mailboxes, pipes, event flags, fixed-size-buffer memory management

Hands-on: Raspberry Pi Pico H (RP2040, dual-core Cortex-M0+) robot — line following, obstacle detection, sensor integration

Introductory Embedded ML (TinyML): pruning, quantization, knowledge distillation

Assessment

Worth knowing

The exam's True/False format punishes vague understanding — it's built to catch plausible-but-wrong statements (e.g. a task transitioning directly BLOCKED → RUNNING instead of via READY). Precision over gist.

The robot project is the single heaviest-weighted deliverable after the exam (≈33% of the final grade) — treat it as non-negotiable, not a side lab.

Development is cross-compilation heavy: VS Code with the Pico extension, GCC, GDB, Valgrind.

No dedicated notes file in this folder — lecture slides and past exams are the primary study material.