Embedded Systems Weekly #128
Tags: embedded
Published: 2022-11-25 22:14:03

Most of us at least heard about the [Brooks's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law), named after the author of The Mythical Man-Month. He sadly died last week. Hat off to Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. who had a major impact on how we manage projects nowadays. (I really hope I won't have to do any new tribute this year. We lost enough major contributors in the past weeks)

**Happy reading!**

## Articles 
[How the First Transistor Worked](https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-history)
This article is a delicious mix of historic facts and technical details. A pleasure to read to discover more about the point-contact transistor.

[Reverse engineering an EV charger](https://www.mnemonic.io/resources/blog/reverse-engineering-an-ev-charger/)
It is an interesting reading because it is pretty rare to see this kind of article on a device well-designed. How a team of experts gets access to a device when it has no flaws? From the other point of view, how do you design your product to be sure to not compromise the fleet if one device is reversed engineered.

[Learn Rust From Assembly Code](http://luajit.io/post/learn-rust-from-assembly-code/)
It is the author's favourite way to learn Rust. In this specific article, he makes us discover how the ownership system is translated into assembly.

[Disassembling an Amazon Blink Mini camera](https://astrid.tech/2022/07/07/0/blink-mini-disassembly/)
Buckle up, this is a 4 parts' article ([2](https://astrid.tech/2022/07/13/0/blink-mini-dumping), [3](https://astrid.tech/2022/08/03/0/blink-mini-fw-analysis/) and [4](https://astrid.tech/2022/08/06/0/blink-mini-4/)) that goes really deep in this blink cam. Each part brings something new to the reader. It's a massive amount of work from the author.

[Starlink User Terminal Modchip](https://github.com/KULeuven-COSIC/Starlink-FI)
It is the repository holding all the resources presented in the talk named "Glitched on Earth by Humans: A Black-Box Security Evaluation of the SpaceX Starlink User Terminal". All instructions, pcb design and code source are available to let the brave among us try the hack.

[Dynamically static allocation in embedded systems](https://personaljournal.ca/qqmrichter/dynamically-static-allocation-in-embedded-systems)
Last week I shared an article on how to be sure that your embedded software doesn't do any dynamic memory allocations. That's for sure, the best way to be sure that you won't have any memory problem in your system. In some cases, under some specific conditions, there are engineers who propose more flexible approaches like the one described in this article. Be extra careful if you adopt a such method in your project.

## Tools / Libraries
[Release of the Embassy executor](https://docs.rs/embassy-executor/0.1.1/embassy_executor/)
It's in the [issue #86 (Feb 2022)](https://embedsysweekly.com/embedded-systems-issue86/), that I talked for the first time about the embassy-executor. It was because of this still fantastic article titled [Async Rust vs RTOS showdown!](https://tweedegolf.nl/en/blog/65/async-rust-vs-rtos-showdown). Since then, Dario Nieuwenhuis continued to work on it, and the first release finally happened this week. I can't emphasize enough that you should take the time to at least read the article and get yourself familiar with the library. It's promising.

[RF transmitter for Raspberry Pi](https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx)
With this project you can turn your Raspberry Pi into an RF transmitter with only a filter to avoid interferences.

## Jobs
[Mobileye, Real-Time Embedded Software Engineer, Haifa, Israel (Partially remote)](https://jobs.embedsysweekly.com/job/KJ0RXjJY/real-time-embedded-software-engineer)
The autonomous Driving group is in charge of the research, design, and implementation of new Software drivers and Operating System features, as well as, maintaining, and enhancing existing ones.

## Misc
[CRUMB Circuit Simulator](https://www.crumbsim.com/)
This week [Mike Bushell](https://mobile.twitter.com/MBushellRacing) released is CRUMB Circuit Simulator. You can find it on Steam or on the App Store. Many already shared that it is fun to play with.