embedded-trainings-2020/down-the-stack-book/src/supporting_your_particular_board.md

Supporting your particular board

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Using a 'normal' PC

• Did you tell your PC it had a mouse plugged in?
• Did you tell it what I/O address the video card was located at?
• No! It auto-discovers all of these things.
  • USB, PCI-Express, SATA all have "plug-and-play"

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Using an Embedded System

• There is no plug-and-play
• Your MCU can put different functions (UART, SPI, etc) on different pins
• The choice of which function goes on which pin was decided by the PCB designer
• You now have to tell the software how the PCB was laid out
  • i.e UART0 TX is on Port 0, Pin 13

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Board Support Crates

• You can wrap this up into a Board Support Crate
• Especially useful if you are using a widely available dev-kit
  • e.g. the nRF52840-DK, or the STM32 Discovery
• Still useful if the board design is an in-house one-off
• Create the drivers and does the pin assignments for you
• Helps make your application portable across different boards

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Using a Board Support Crate

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