looking for vendor agnostic embedded systems forum

kent_dorfman766

kent_dorfman766

Hey Yinz. (Yeah, from Pittsburgh)

Anyways, I've been focusing on embedded systems lately and have built up a collection of rants regarding the particular ecosystems I'm working under (STM32)...but that caused me to pose a larger question.

Are there any "very active" embedded system discussion forums that are agnositc from being sponsored by, or tied to, a particular companies products. Obviously my web search has been less than helpful, since I'm asking here. I'm looking for something less lurked by hobbiists and more by professionals, and where the sophistication level allows for discussions about hardware/software integration at the layer1-layer2 levels: hardware and basic ASIC programming: ie MCUs, RTOS, DSP, bare-metal programming...
 
I can recommend something from Arduino and Raspeberry Pi... Yeah, I know those are from particular companies, but hey, they are popular and common stuff that do get used by large companies that have formal engineering processes in place.

Yeah, they will end up being primarily hobbyist lurking places. Professionals are usually bound by NDA's, so it may be difficult to tease out good sophisticated discussions and determine if someone is a pro or not. Sometimes, a hobbyist sounds like a wannabe pro, and sometimes there's someone who's paid, but sounds like a n00b. And there's gonna be someone who's got things going so smooth, you have to wonder if they're paid to promote the place.
 
re - pi forums...ugh...as mentioned, mostly hobbiists...Thus is the nature of RPI: a glorified toy that entices idiot managers into thinking they can get something for nothing. As long as they stay in the educational domain I have no problem with RPI, but they are NOT professional systems.

Not too worried about NDAs. They are usually restricted to specific intellectual property, not industry standards or platform/ecosystem discussions.
ie: I've been fighting with the STM32 development ecosystem for months and it's a case of good hardware being being encumbered by really really lousy documentation and support tools. manuals obviously written by folks who don't speak english as a primary language, demos and eclipse based IDE that cannot have undergone any sort of quality control before being published, and a marketing centric culture at STmicro where user metrics and advertising are more important than providing stable tools...and God forbid that you complain on a company owned forum becuase that's just an excuse to get blacklisted.
 
Well, you start with a toy and see what you can make out of it before deciding to get rigorous and professional so that you can have quality stuff and can make promises that have money attached to them. Pi and Arduino are meant to be raw materials for prototypes for electronics.

It's kind of like playing with sand, only to realize that when mixed with water and a few other types of materials, you get concrete, which can be used on a professional construction site.

If you don't like the development ecosystem for the microcontrollers, this is your chance to come out with a proposal and a proof of concept of what it would take to make it better. Yeah, it will take work, time, possibly money, and you'll be developing documentation, repos, and standards, rather than microcontrollers.
 
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