What are some things you have to consider when designing an embedded system? It depends. Generally, you need low power, you have much less memory, and you have a few interfaces to work with. I think an example will work. Let’s say we’re designing a smart watch. We want it to connect to our phone, track our heart rate and steps, and run all day without needing a charge. That’s a lot to fit in to a small watch. We would need to limit power consumption to minimize the battery size, we need a Bluetooth module to communicate with our phone, an accelerometer or GPS to track our movement, an infrared sensor to measure your heart rate, and a small LED display to be able to see the information. On top of that, we need memory to store and run our software which takes in the data, performs computations, drives the display, and automatically connects to your phone via Bluetooth.

Let’s do another example. How about a CubeSat? A CubeSat is a much smaller version of a satellite. The sizes of CubeSats have been standardized and typically you see 1U, 2U, and 3U sizes. 1U is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm, 2U is 10cm x 10cm x 20cm, and 3U is 10cm x 10cm x 30cm. Now you get the idea of how small they are. You have to fit everything into this small chassis – your electronics, battery, antenna, thrusters, and payload. In the space industry, weight = money so you must cut down on power, memory, and interfaces to minimize weight as much as possible.