Embedded Forum - Recent Threads

Find Wireless ARM MCU

cylee_acc — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:49:09 GMT

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for recommendations for a wireless ARM-based MCU for a research prototype.

Target specifications:

32-bit ARM MCU with operating frequency > 78 MHz
On-chip ≥ 512 KB Flash and ≥ 64 KB RAM
Integrated low-power wireless radio (Sub-GHz preferred)
Integrated power amplifier ¶ supporting up to 20 dBm TX output
Small package options preferred (QFN or WLCSP)

In addition, I’d like to know whether any suitable devices are available as bare die, known good die (KGD).

If possible, please also share links to datasheets, reference designs, and current availability.

Thanks in advance for your help.

How do you decide which CVEs actually matter in embedded products?

micheal.embedded — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:53:36 GMT

In embedded products, patching every CVE often isn’t realistic due to certification, long test cycles, limited update windows, or system stability risks.

I’m curious how others handle this in practice. When a CVE affects a component in your system, what factors determine whether it gets patched immediately, deferred, or accepted as risk?

Do you prioritize based on exploitability, attack surface, physical access assumptions, update cost, or something else?

hands on Raspberry Pi Pico 2 project book free review copies for embedded devs

micheal.embedded — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 12:22:55 GMT

I wrote a handson Raspberry Pi Pico 2 project book free review copies for embedded devs

Hi everyone, I’m Michael Bell I write embedded systems books for beginners and professionals.

I just released “Embedded Systems with Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and RP2350: Projects and Deep Dives”.
This is a project-based book that takes you from blinking LEDs to building real embedded systems using the RP2350, GPIO, timers, interrupts, and communication interfaces.

I’m looking for honest feedback from developers and hobbyists.
If you’re interested, I can send you a free Kindle copy in exchange for an honest review on Amazon. No pressure I just want to make sure the book is practical and useful.

You can also check out the example code and projects on GitHub here:
📌 https://github.com/michael-embedded/pico-embedded-book

And here’s the Amazon page to see the book details:
📌 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G62PXWTP

Many of the projects include detailed walk-throughs and debugging notes so you can learn how and why things work.

Thanks for helping me make embedded learning better!

GCC Arm toolchain version 15 released

Jan Cumps — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 08:58:45 GMT

Approximately every six months, a new pre-built GCC toolchain for ARM is released. On December 17, release 15.2 Rel1 was published: https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/arm-gnu-toolchain-downloads. The first 15.x version.

Next to some additional interesting C++standard features, there are goodies for performant ARM binaries: ARM Development Community blog: GCC 15: Continuously Improving

Is fancy code completion really worth it ?

michaelkellett — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 10:35:26 GMT

Of credible AI horror stories I think this is about as bad as it gets !

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/researchers-uncover-critical-ai-ide-flaws-exposing-developers-to-data-theft-and-rce

I'm sticking with the "legacy" Keil IDE for C coding on ARM - it may be a little slower but at least I'm fairly sure that nothing gets into my code that I didn't put there !

MAX32666 PCM Audio subsystem keeps repeating samples

obones — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:54:54 GMT

Hello,

In an attempt at exploring the MAX32666 feature set, I'm trying to get its Audio subsystem to output a stream of bit patterns via I²S. Reading the documentation, and because the entire system is a 32bit architecture, I thought that I could use two 32 bits channels on a 64 bits frame so that no space is wasted in RAM.

Sadly, this does not to work as the lowest 8 bits are always cut out, which I reported at Analog's forums. A simple workaround is to use two 24 bits channels on a 48 bits frame so that all bits are packed without dead time in between samples.

With that out of the way I created my target samples and sent them along but could only get 900mV on the DOUT pin! As it turns out, one has to activate all four Audio pins even if you don't use them, but that's not indicated in the datasheet.

Sadly, even after that, I could not get the proper signal that I expected so I decided to create a set of samples that would allow me to clearly see what's happening on the output:

sample indexes	left	right
0 - 1	10000000'00000000'00000110'00000000	10000000'00000000'00001010'00000000
2 - 3	10000000'00000000'00010010'00000000	10000000'00000000'00100010'00000000
4 - 5	10000000'00000000'01000010'00000000	10000000'00000000'10000010'00000000
6 - 7	11111111'11111111'11111010'00000000	11111111'11111111'11110110'00000000
8 - 9	11111111'11111111'11101110'00000000	11111111'11111111'11011110'00000000
10 - 11	11111111'11111111'10111110'00000000	11111111'11111111'01111110'00000000
12 - 13	11111111'11111110'11111110'00000000	11111111'11111101'11111110'00000000
14 - 15	11111111'11111011'11111110'00000000	11111111'11110111'11111110'00000000
16 - 17	11111111'11101111'11111110'00000000	11111111'11011111'11111110'00000000
18 - 19	11111111'10111111'11111110'00000000	11111111'01111111'11111110'00000000
20 - 21	11111110'11111111'11111110'00000000	11111101'11111111'11111110'00000000
22 - 23	11111011'11111111'11111110'00000000	11110111'11111111'11111110'00000000
24 - 25	11000000'00000000'00000010'00000000	10000000'00000000'00000010'00000000

The basic idea is to have a marker bit be at a different place in all samples to easily identify them, while having the lowest 8 bits at zero as they will get ignored.

The code that sends all those basically does this:

Activate Audio subsystem
Turn off both TX channels
Fill transmission FIFOs (this consumes 2*4 samples)
Turn on both TX channels
While there are samples remaining, wait for space in FIFOs, place one sample for left, one for right in their respective FIFO
Now that all samples are in the FIFOs, wait for them to get empty
Turn off both TX channels

Using the "capture to file" feature of my DSO (thanks again E14, it's really a nice one), and a bit of editing in Paint.Net, I'm getting the following trace on the output pin:

So, the 8 queued samples are sent just fine, then an additional 4 as well, but after that, the subsystem keeps repeating samples 4 and 5 until I turn off the TX channels, for no reasons that are obvious to me.

I understand that the subsystem will repeat the last sample it has received if I'm not providing new samples fast enough, but I'm sure they are all placed in the FIFO as the while loops exit. And why repeat #4 and #5 when clearly 6 others have been given (and sent) afterwards?

In the Audio subsystem example provided in the MSDK, they are using the interrupt vector which I'll try using over the week-end to see if it helps.

In the meantime, does this situation sound familiar to any of you? Would you have any recommendation?

Thanks in advance

Uploading OTBR Firmware in nRF52840

meera_hussien — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 04:03:42 GMT

Good day,

I am trying to upload the OT firmare on my nRF52840 usb dongle, but unsuccessful. I am not sure why. FYI, i am using the nRF Connect Programmer to program the dongle. Below is the error that i am getting.

And after i try to write the firmware, this is the error that i am getting

Below is the log file

2025-10-30T03:23:28.461Z INFO Initialising the bundled nrfutil device
2025-10-30T03:23:28.479Z DEBUG Application data folder: C:\Users\meera.hussien\AppData\Roaming\nrfconnect\pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG App pc-nrfconnect-programmer v4.6.2 (official)
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG App path: C:\Users\meera.hussien\.nrfconnect-apps\node_modules\pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG nRFConnect 5.2.0, required by the app is (>=5.2.0)
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG nRFConnect path: C:\Users\meera.hussien\AppData\Local\Programs\nrfconnect\resources\app.asar
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG HomeDir: C:\Users\meera.hussien
2025-10-30T03:23:28.520Z DEBUG TmpDir: C:\Users\MEERA~1.HUS\AppData\Local\Temp
2025-10-30T03:23:29.295Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:23:29.296Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:23:29.300Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:23:29.340Z INFO Using the bundled core version for nrfutil device: 8.0.0
2025-10-30T03:23:29.370Z INFO Using nrfutil-device version: 2.12.3
2025-10-30T03:23:29.370Z INFO Using nrf-device-lib version: 0.17.81
2025-10-30T03:23:29.370Z INFO Using nrf-probe version: 0.40.1
2025-10-30T03:23:29.370Z INFO Using JLink version: JLink_V8.18
2025-10-30T03:23:29.464Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for E94BBFFE0C8C.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:29.464Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for 74:4D:BD:7B:B3:00.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:29.465Z INFO Device connected with the serial number E94BBFFE0C8C
2025-10-30T03:23:29.465Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:23:29.466Z INFO Device connected with the serial number 74:4D:BD:7B:B3:00
2025-10-30T03:23:29.466Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:23:31.057Z INFO Device connected with the serial number E94BBFFE0C8C
2025-10-30T03:23:51.997Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for E94BBFFE0C8C.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:51.997Z INFO Device connected with the serial number E94BBFFE0C8C
2025-10-30T03:23:51.998Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:23:52.061Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for E94BBFFE0C8C.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:23:52.062Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:24:01.863Z INFO Selecting device with the serial number E94BBFFE0C8C
2025-10-30T03:24:01.873Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:24:02.483Z INFO Selected device with the serial number E94BBFFE0C8C
2025-10-30T03:24:02.483Z INFO Using nrfutil-device to communicate with target via USB SDFU protocol
2025-10-30T03:24:02.487Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device selected"
2025-10-30T03:24:02.487Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:24:32.555Z INFO Parsing HEX file: C:\Users\meera.hussien\Downloads\ot-rcp-USB.hex
2025-10-30T03:24:32.563Z INFO File was last modified at 10/30/2025, 11:22:39 AM
2025-10-30T03:24:32.586Z INFO Update files regions according to Application core
2025-10-30T03:24:32.586Z INFO Parse memory regions for file
2025-10-30T03:24:50.491Z INFO Does not need to be reloaded: C:\Users\meera.hussien\Downloads\ot-rcp-USB.hex
2025-10-30T03:24:50.495Z INFO Hash is generated by SHA256
2025-10-30T03:24:50.499Z INFO Performing DFU. This may take a few seconds
2025-10-30T03:24:50.513Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:24:54.792Z INFO All dfu images have been written to the target device
2025-10-30T03:24:55.416Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for E94BBFFE0C8C.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:24:55.417Z INFO Wait For Device was successful
2025-10-30T03:24:55.417Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:24:55.422Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: running nrfutil device"
2025-10-30T03:24:55.494Z INFO Getting serial port options from the persistent store for E94BBFFE0C8C.pc-nrfconnect-programmer
2025-10-30T03:24:55.495Z DEBUG Sending event "programmer: device connected"
2025-10-30T03:24:55.587Z ERROR Error: Failed with exit code 1.
One or more set mcu state tasks failed:
* E94BBFFE0C8C: The operation you tried to run is not available for the selected device.

The operation is either not supported for this type of device or the device has issues and it cannot be recognized (NotFound)