Customer Reviews

Embedded Systems Building Blocks, Second Edition: Complete and Ready-to-Use Modules in C

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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An excellent book for those new to Embedded Systems concepts. Not really for experienced users but still a good solid reference. This book doesn't assume that you know everything already like most books. By using these ready to use C modules all the user needs to do is to make some minor changes in order to get a project off the ground. Concepts are explained very clearly with no nonsense and without being too simplistic. Topics are interesting. It even utilizes a real time kernel. ( his own but that's OK ) I highly recommend this book.

This book from Jean Labrosse is right in line with the author's other book (Micro-C/OS II): simple, right to the point and tremendously useful. The book really demystifies some concepts too often omitted in other books, such as real-time systems concepts. The author provides numerous pictures, which are far easier to understand that any written explanations. I can't wait to read more from Labrosse.

If you have experience in writing device driver (for any OS) this book is not the best choice. But if you don't, this book is an excellent one. This book takes you through each and every step involved in building various kinds of device driver for the system. The content is written to make sure you understand the concept(s).

This book is intended for uses on RTOS, ore more specifically, uCosII which ared used in the sample codes. To me, using real time kernel for simple applications as demonstrated in this book, is highly unnecessary. The codes seems to take up plenty of memory, there are still plenty much room for optimization. I am not using uCOSII, therefore, the sample code and most explanations seem to me as "calling functions" only, which I quickly browsed through.

However, the concept of RTOS is well-explained! With simple sentences, the author clearly illustrate how RTOS run basically. This is especially useful to those with no background on OS. I particular found the chapter on "Analog I/O" is more worth reading. It organizes some of the common I/O reading methods in clear form. For instance, after ADC is enabled, its output can be polled after some delay, or polled periodically, or by external interrupt. In addition, a great example on ADC and DAC project is covered.

I would recommend this book to beginners who have learned to write simple single task (such as read/write I/O, writing to LCD, RS232), and want to integrate tasks into a bigger application.

Delivery was quick, the book's package was well done. The book is in a very good state.