Front Panel: Designing Software for Embedded User Interfaces shows you how to design intuitive interfaces for embedded systems and how to address special needs such as: the safety hazards inherent in controls; handling heavy machinery; and medical or transport systems. Front Panel was written for electronics or firmware engineers who have evolved into software engineers and for desktop programmers who find themselves writing more and more software for devices (not computers) that are dedicated to a single job. Because the cost of parts for such devices, including memory, affects the marketability of the device, embedded software must often run in less memory than desktop software. The up side is that it usually has fewer features. As the products that use embedded processors become more sophisticated, the challenge of constructing efficient and maintainable event-driven software becomes increasingly complex.

Niall Murphy explains how to leverage object methods (whether you are using assembler or C), how to queue and process user events, and how to build a multiple screen interface. The book contains C programming examples that show how to structure the data that can be manipulated by the user.

328 pages, softcover, CD-ROM included

Contents

• Introduction
• The Model-View-Controller Paradigm
• Scheduling and Managing User Events
• Finite-State Machines and Table-Driven Software
• Graphics
• System Issues
• C++ for Embedded Systems
• The Design Process
• Usability for Embedded Systems
• The Future
• RTOS and µC/OS
• The Companion Disk

About the Author

Niall Murphy graduated in computer science from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has been designing user interface software, mostly for medical equipment both in Ireland and in California. The feedback from his articles in Embedded Systems Programming magazine led him to write a book on the subject of designing software for embedded user interfaces. Murphy's writing and consulting activities are currently based in Galway, Ireland. He prefers that this book not be purchased or used for the development of software for the military or munitions industries.