Embedded Computing Design

We live in a digital world, surrounded by computers. We do our work on computers, we shop on computers, we carry computers around in our pockets, on our wrists, and even now, you’re reading this article on a computer.

Software surrounds us everyday, but for many of us, it’s a nebulous concept. Lots of people probably think of The Matrix with its scrolling green text, or of hackers in dark basements creating mysterious series of zeroes and ones to be used for whatever nefarious purposes.

For most people, binary is a mystifying concept of nonsensical zeroes and ones, the understanding of which is reserved for computer nerds and the computers they use. Well, today you join their ranks!

Matter is fast becoming the only Smart Home standard that… matters. Now, Silicon Labs and Arduino have partnered up to help developers go from new board to commissioned device faster than ever, speeding time to market.

We’ve worked our way from machine code up to language-dependent syntax, and hopefully, if you’ve stuck with us, those two terms make sense! Now, we move on to two final general software structures: functions and objects.

Up to this point in our series, we’ve intentionally kept things pretty broad. The fundamentals in the last two “levels” of software are relatively applicable across most languages, but now it’s time to get a bit more specific. And the first step to that is looking at the concept of software syntax.

In our last article, we looked at two of the most basic concepts in software: variables and operators. Without these two integral parts of software “language” it’s nearly impossible to do anything. Now, we’re going to build on those simple concepts to see how they’re used to execute more complex functions and operations.

As I’m sure all of you know, software languages can be tricky to understand, especially when you consider the myriad of differences that separate each language from the others. But there are certain components that remain relatively consistent across most languages.

In the past decade, IoT, or the Internet of Things, has become increasingly prevalent in our day-to-day lives. Despite — or perhaps because of — the abundance of IoT devices commonly used in all sorts of places, it can often feel like a nebulous concept to define. So, what actually is the Internet of Things?

With the advent of the digital age, we daily put more and more of our lives into computers, the internet, and digital devices. This increase in digitization means the amount of value that can be found online is staggering. While this is a good thing in many ways, it also means that there is increased opportunity for bad actors to exploit this digital land of plenty.