learning c for embedded

[JohnnyP]

Just got the "C Programming for Embedded Microcontrollers" book, looking at setting up the tools.

I had a friend set me up with a pc that I can boot up in XP or Windows 10.

The book says to download and install the DJGPP.zip files.

Should I install and use those files with XP, or should I ignore that and boot up in Windows 10 and use Visual Studio?

I'm a Mac user, so all this is foreign.

Maybe try to follow along in the book, but use an online editor on my Mac?

I've programmed in assembly for 30 years (HC11-HC12), trying to learn C now.

I appreciate any advice.

[shadders]

Hi,

I have not really programmed embedded systems with Visual Studio - i understand that VS can target an embedded system, but i think this may be the Intel Edison or Windows Embedded specific platform ? Not sure.

I completed two courses from EdX on embedded systems - Texas University - they were excellent. I thoroughly recommend these courses. They base the course on the Texas Instruments Launchpad TM4C123G Evaluation Kit - which is based on the ARM Cortex M4 CPU. The IDE used is the Kiel offering which is free if the target code is within a specific size. The have addons required for the course. This course gets you working on a system very quickly - they provide all the requirements for the memory mapping, how to write to ports etc., with the setup too. I found that without their supporting documentation for the course - i would have spent considerable time trying to work out how to use the microcontroller to complete a basic function. As such, i would recommend a book specifically for the target platform - such that the book provides all the setup tasks required without you having to progress though every data sheet - which takes ages.

Another compiler i used was the MikroElectronika C compiler for the AVR - which is quite cheap and limitless - and if you compare to the commercial offerings - they can be very expensive.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Shadders.

[teprojects1]

Hi,

Microsoft Visual Studio is a very powerful software and it requires a lot of power from your system, in simple words it consumes resources. So, I would suggest you to forget using Windows XP with visual studio.

Install Windows 10 and then use Visual studio with it. It will work great and you don't need to install any other files in start. Simple get your visual studio ultimate setup which is free to use, as you are using it for personal use.

I hope it will help, if you have more questions regarding its installation, let me know.

Thanks.

[kunalkapoor]

Hi, I am new to this forum. I want to learn Embedded programming. can you guide me how and where to start from?