Thinking about trying embedded programming

[CodeCobbler]

As I enjoy working from home anyways and preferably in bed.

Any good tips on where to start out? I'm good at hitting things.

 

[northernladuk]

As I enjoy working from home anyways and preferably in bed.

Any good tips on where to start out? I'm good at hitting things.

Wake up, sit up in bed, make some progammings plenty cheapness and they presto.. inbedded programming. Easy.

 

[CodeCobbler]

Rates are moderately crap, but better than designing embedded hardware.

Dunno how you'd start, I just started.

Though these days you're not so memory constrained as in the days of 1kb (or less) of eprom.

Rates appear to be approx £40hr I would consider that to be better than a lot of .net stuff available atm.

 

[doodab]

You can build up an atmel AVR on a breadboard for peanuts, the USB programmer is about £25 and the software is free to download. It's best to have some idea what you intend to do with it before you start or it'll end up gathering dust in the corner.

That is the sum total of my embedded experience

 

[CodeCobbler]

You can build up an atmel AVR on a breadboard for peanuts, the USB programmer is about £25 and the software is free to download. It's best to have some idea what you intend to do with it before you start or it'll end up gathering dust in the corner.

That is the sum total of my embedded experience

I'd prefer to start somewhere practical, I've done a bit of embedded in the past (breadboards, emulators) but I don't believe its at all relevant, I'm not sure what the current trends in embedded are but that's where I'd like to pick up.

 

[FarmerPalmer]

I have done some things with AVR but the main market is ARM and PIC.

Arm to give performance with low power consumption, and PIC and AVR are used where you dont need much processing power, and need it to be cheap.

It it suprising how much consumer electronics, where you wouldn't think they needed a processor, but it does, uses a lot of cheap PIC and AVR processors.

There are plenty of dev kits for different ARM procesors. In fact a Raspberry Pi may be a good way to start as it has lots of IO to play with and I'm sure there will be IO boards to plug in on the market soon, especially as a lot of embeeded development seems to be ARM and Linux these days.

There are also plenty of AVR and PIC dev kits and plug ins. I have a few myself that I have bought to experiment with and get started on developments for clients.

 

[FarmerPalmer]

Yes.

It's amazing how much dust embedded stuff can gather.



And £40/hr?

There is a company in Swindon that is looking for people and keeps advertising £38-45 range. But it's telecoms and they pay more than traditional embedded.

 

[Dark Black]

Yes.
..And £40/hr?

Seems the going rate, especially around here

 

[SupremeSpod]

I have done some things with AVR but the main market is ARM and PIC.

Arm to give performance with low power consumption, and PIC and AVR are used where you dont need much processing power, and need it to be cheap.

It it suprising how much consumer electronics, where you wouldn't think they needed a processor, but it does, uses a lot of cheap PIC and AVR processors.

There are plenty of dev kits for different ARM procesors. In fact a Raspberry Pi may be a good way to start as it has lots of IO to play with and I'm sure there will be IO boards to plug in on the market soon, especially as a lot of embeeded development seems to be ARM and Linux these days.

There are also plenty of AVR and PIC dev kits and plug ins. I have a few myself that I have bought to experiment with and get started on developments for clients.

WHS++

 

[CodeCobbler]

What would be a typical rate for an engineer in embedded, skilled in programming ARM7 the low level and well as the abstract way (MBD, code synthesis), possibly on multi platform systems. Should be famliar with MATLAB/Simulink in order to be able to simulate algorithms.

Wha....?