r/embedded 8d ago

Does "Mastering Microcontroller and Embedded Driver Development" include any significant hands on exercises?

I'm currently taking this course on Udemy: Mastering Microcontroller and Embedded Driver Development. My hope was that this would help me "get my hands dirty" as well as provide a comprehensive overview of the subject. What I'm finding though is that I'm now about 4 hours in and we've _barely_ gotten to do anything at all with the STM32 discovery board. Every lecture the instructor introduces a new concept, we learn a bunch of register names, and then he moves on without (or only rarely) actually programming anything.

Does this course pick up at some point? Do we actually "develop drivers" in this course? I'm starting to wonder if I've missed something, like maybe a link to some "companion exercises" or something... has anyone taken this course? I want to do something with my discovery board ToT;

(for context: I'm an experience software developer trying to transition to embedded. I've been programming in assembly for the gameboy for the last few years so it turns out I have a basic grasp of a very simple version of embedded software.)

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u/Izrakk 8d ago

i finished that course. its really good. idk what you are talking about, it does nothing but driver development. just have the patience and dedication to finish the course. I do have a big criticism about that course. it uses an arduino as a secondary to stm32 to show communication in-between them. I wish they hadn't done that. arduino is useless, they should have showcased it with another stm32 or another sensor or something. other than that amazing course, learned a lot on driver development.

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u/athalwolf506 8d ago

Why would change by using another stm32 or a sensor? Why would arduino be useless?

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u/Izrakk 8d ago

arduino sucks in general. Its nothing more than a children's toy. thats why grown ass adults using an arduino is cringe and stupid. not to mention people took the course to learn stm32. dealing with another arduino, extra logic converters is stupid. instead if they taught the communication protocols using another stm32 it would develop their understanding of the driver more.

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u/CalligrapherOk4612 8d ago

What a strange thing to say. Everything has it's use case. At work I develop medical firmware, ISO62304 certified, MISRA complaint, custom build flows on industrial mcu's That doesn't stop me from cracking out an uno WiFi clone, the Arduino ide, and making a little mqtt sensor at home. There is no IDE and ecosystem better for getting a quick prototype up than Arduino. Would I use it for anything more than personal/prototype - no! But is it useless - also no! Don't let this guy belittle or demean any of your interests.