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How to Run an ESP32 Zephyr Application on Espressif’s QEMU
When working with embedded systems, especially platforms like Zephyr, it’s not always practical to rely on real hardware. Maybe your dev board is in the mail, or maybe you’re trying to write tests that run in CI without any physical devices attached. That’s where QEMU comes in. QEMU is a powerful open-source emulator that can…
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How to Present Your Upskilling Journey to Land a Senior Embedded Role
In a competitive field like embedded systems, knowing more isn’t enough. You have to prove it. You’ve likely spent the past year or two investing in new skills: working with IoT, experimenting with edge AI, exploring TensorFlow Lite, or mastering Zephyr RTOS. But when it comes to moving into a senior or team lead role,…
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A Brief History of Zephyr RTOS
In the fast-evolving world of embedded systems and IoT, selecting the right operating system is critical. For skilled and intermediate engineers, understanding where a real-time operating system (RTOS) comes from (e.g. history, evolution, and the forces driving its development) can provide valuable context for making informed technical decisions. Zephyr, now one of the most robust…
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How to Learn Embedded Systems While Working Full-Time: Lessons from an Amazon Robotics Engineer
I’ve followed Steve Branam on LinkedIn for a while and have always admired his steady growth through high-performing companies like iRobot, Dojo Five, and now Amazon Robotics. The embedded systems field is notoriously conservative when it comes to adopting new tools and programming languages, yet the demands of the industry continue to evolve. Upskilling isn’t…
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The Wrong Way to Use AI (and How to Actually Write Better Code with LLMs)
This viral post captured a feeling every programmer knows all too well: the thrill of a cleaner architecture, the joy of perfect abstraction, slick implementations that are fast, efficient, and easy to read… …and the heartbreak when it doesn’t run. There’s no denying the appeal of letting a large language model refactor a gnarly embedded…
