🔧 Embedded & Systems¶

Python where it meets the metal — from microcontrollers and sensors to real-time control, device fleets and the Linux kernel.

This section covers the low-level end of Python: driving hardware, testing firmware, operating devices unattended, and observing what the system does beneath your code. Some topics run on ordinary Python; others target real boards, Linux kernels, or robotics rigs, and are noted as such.

Topics¶

• 📊 System Monitoring — collect metrics, alert on thresholds, export to Prometheus
• 🔌 Firmware Testing — serial protocols, framing, test harnesses, device simulation
• 🎛️ Hardware Simulation — discrete-event simulation and testbeds
• ⏱️ Real-time Systems — soft vs hard real-time, jitter, why Python needs care
• 🌐 Networking Automation — SSH device config, idempotency, NetOps
• 🐍 Embedded Python — MicroPython & CircuitPython on microcontrollers
• 🖥️ Python for Embedded Linux — Raspberry Pi, GPIO, daemons, cross-compiling
• 🤖 Robotics Middleware — ROS 2 nodes, topics and pub/sub
• 🔬 Kernel Tracing — strace, perf, ftrace and eBPF from Python

How the topics relate¶

   Microcontroller  →  Embedded Linux  →  Full systems
   (Embedded Python)   (Embedded Linux)   (System Monitoring,
                                           Networking Automation)

   Testing & modeling:  Firmware Testing, Hardware Simulation
   Timing & internals:  Real-time Systems, Kernel Tracing
   Robotics:            Robotics Middleware (ties sensors→control→actuators)

A suggested path: start with Embedded Python (Python on a chip) and Embedded Linux (Python on a small computer) to ground the hardware model. Add Firmware Testing and Hardware Simulation for testing without (or before) hardware. Then System Monitoring and Networking Automation for operating real systems and fleets. Finally, Real-time Systems, Kernel Tracing, and Robotics Middleware for the demanding, timing- and internals-heavy end.