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Insights into Writing External Device Drivers in Embedded Development: An Analysis of Three Key Points
Release time:
2023-01-16 09:53
One major advantage of using microcontrollers today is that embedded software developers no longer typically need to write their own device drivers. It’s common for microcontroller vendors to provide software frameworks that abstract the hardware and enable developers to initialize, read from, and write to peripheral devices—such as SPI, UART, analog-to-digital converters, and more—with simple function calls. However, embedded developers still often need to write drivers themselves to interface with external integrated circuits, which could include sensors, actuators, motor controllers, and the like. In today’s article, we’ll explore several best practices for writing your own drivers for external devices.
Best Practice #1—Separate Implementation from Configuration
A key aspect of writing any driver is to separate the implementation from the configuration. This separation helps ensure that the driver is reusable and flexible. For example, the driver can be easily compiled into an object file, so developers won't have access to its internal details—and thus, it can be used across multiple projects. Developers can still access the configuration module, which they can use to tailor the driver to meet their specific application requirements. If the configuration needs to be adjusted, it won't affect the driver's design or force other projects that rely on the driver to fall out of sync or be compelled to adopt new changes and undergo a validation cycle.
Separating implementation from configuration also allows for abstraction of external hardware, so developers don't need to have a full understanding of what's happening inside the hardware—as is the case with microcontrollers. I often wish that integrated circuit vendors would stop providing configuration tool GUIs and instead devote their efforts to writing reusable and portable drivers for their devices. It’s extremely challenging for each of their customers to write drivers and fully comprehend their modules simply by reading data sheets that are roughly 100 pages long.
Best Practice #2—Create a Simple Underlying Interface
When writing drivers, embedded developers often try to do too much in their implementations, resulting in drivers that become a hybrid of driver and application code. A driver’s interface should feature a simple interface that includes:
An initialization function
Write a function
Read function
Anything beyond that is truly starting to enter the realm of applications! The logic behind this is simple: the driver should simply provide the ability to communicate with the device and enable read and write operations. Then, application modules will access these read and write functions to build reusable application components needed for higher-level application code.
Best Practice #3—Provide Error Detection
Unfortunately, much of the code written by embedded developers simply assumes that everything will work out fine. When writing drivers for external devices, however, we can’t afford to be so complacent. Device drivers must account for potential errors and failures. For example, can the driver time out and report an error? If a read operation is performed, can the function indicate whether the read was successful? And what happens if a parity error occurs?
There are several different approaches to providing error and fault detection in drivers. First, each function can return an error code. If the operation succeeds, this error code will simply evaluate to true; if a problem occurs, the error code will simply evaluate to false. Second, if a problem does indeed occur, an additional feature allowing error checking can be added to the device interface, which would include the following additional operations:
Return drive error status
Clear the driver error status
Similarly, this provides the driver with flexibility and fault-detection capabilities, and allows application code to carefully monitor whether the driver’s operations are successful.
Writing device drivers for integrated circuits beyond microcontrollers represents one of the last frontiers for embedded developers, and we still have to write our own drivers. In today’s post, we’ll explore several best practices for developing drivers for external integrated circuits—practices that will help readers create scalable and reusable drivers capable of detecting faults and enabling application code to respond appropriately.
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