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Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

nordicsemi.com

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Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#41

Post by mrheosuper »

vbezhenar wrote: post #17
monegator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm proficient with many MCU families. Microchip tooling: download, double click, install, just works. Zero need for any framework, good bare metal support. a C project is an actual C project. Granted, if you use that MCC piece of shit you're in for a bad time, but going bare metal require zero effort, a single include file if you need to access peripherals, and you actually have documentation to do so. ST tooling: s…

I completely agree. I spent lots of time trying to figure out their modern SDK, but in the end I abandoned it and just used their old SDK. Their examples and approach are terrible, but in the end I was able to make it work, after untangling the holy mess of macros they put there. Their old SDK is bearable, their new SDK... I still think I need to go there, but I don't have enough willpower to do that. So much moving…

i did not use Nordic-Zephyr, but i have run Zephyr on ESP32/STM32.

It's true that the learning curve is very step, but their idea is reasonable.

The execution is ... not that good at this moment imo. It's nearly impossible to debug device tree "macro hell", the preprocessor is not designed to debug that, and they abuse the hell out of it.

Also i'm wondering why you dont want "RTOS", in Zephyr setup, your entry point is still old boring "main" loop.

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#42

Post by mrheosuper »

mystified5016 wrote: post #19
monegator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm proficient with many MCU families. Microchip tooling: download, double click, install, just works. Zero need for any framework, good bare metal support. a C project is an actual C project. Granted, if you use that MCC piece of shit you're in for a bad time, but going bare metal require zero effort, a single include file if you need to access peripherals, and you actually have documentation to do so. ST tooling: s…

Installing a whole toolchain and SDK system-wide is such nonsense. Espressif's toolchain and SDK are in a git repo that you add as a submodule, or in a directory anywhere you want. If I want to use microchip or Nordic on a new machine I have to go through this whole process of installing and configuring everything. My ESP projects simply involve a git pull and I'm done. Nordic was a special pain in the ass because I…

i dont like espressif build system.

like "component" directory in cmake, or just call our "cmake function" to include this source files. Or modify this variable to add your custom dir.

Why they can't just stick with vanilla cmake ?

That's the reason i run Zephyr on esp32, no cmake nonsense from espressif.

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#43

Post by DaveExeter »

fra wrote: post #25

I'm the co-founder and CEO of Memfault. We were in the W19 YC batch. I never thought our news would make the front page of HN! This is a very exciting day for us (after a very intense few months). We've known the Nordic team for years and could not think of a better partner to grow our platform. Happy to answer questions, if you have them.

Don't keep us guessing -- what was the bag?

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#44

Post by ryukoposting »

I have been developing firmware for Nordic chips for about 5 years now, and I have roughly the same amount of experience with Memfault.

The idea of Memfault is like Datadog for IoT stuff. The reality of Memfault is that everyone just uses it to push OTA firmware upgrades through the cloud, and capture stack traces on crashes. Sometimes you bolt on their metrics later, but 95% of the value is in OTA firmware upgrades and crash reports.

Nordic has started to assemble a juggernaut of a tech stack, and a collossal moat. They keep most of their Zephyr contributions outside the main source tree, in something they call the nRF Connect SDK. They've been developing vendor-specific extensions to Memfault's SDK for years.

The upside with Nordic is you get a complete embedded tech stack out of the box. The downside is that, if their stack doesn't doesn't offer what you need, you have to grapple with the incomprehensibly complex SDK in the entire industry. For some companies, it works great. For others, it's an attractive nuisance.

I don't know how much actually changes for either company with this acquisition. It probably isn't good news if you're ST, Infineon, or Microchip.

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#46

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

blutack wrote: post #11
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #2

Nordic makes some good products. When I was doing hardware design for a product that uses a battery my options for power profiling were either not to do it or spend some eye watering amount of money. Then I discovered Nordic makes the PPKII, a cost effective, highly accurate profiler with quite good software. I detect good things in store for the company just based on the quality of stuff they have been putting out.

The TinyCurrent or uCurrent can be used for this as well when paired with a scope with scpi. However, the ranges aren't dynamic which is annoying if you're using something a WiFi part where you're going from uA to 200mA. https://n-fuse.co/devices/tinyCurrent-precision-low-Current-...

That was actually very much close to my use case - ESP32 modules sit right in this range.

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#47

Post by tckr »

DaveExeter wrote: post #43
fra wrote: post #25

I'm the co-founder and CEO of Memfault. We were in the W19 YC batch. I never thought our news would make the front page of HN! This is a very exciting day for us (after a very intense few months). We've known the Nordic team for years and could not think of a better partner to grow our platform. Happy to answer questions, if you have them.

Don't keep us guessing -- what was the bag?

Parsing the stock exchange notice [1], the three founders seem to have received 42 Million USD. If they had the same amount of shares, they received around 14 Million each.

> The three founders of Memfault - CEO Francois Baldassari, CTO Chris Coleman and VP Developer Experience Tyler Hoffman – will reinvest 30% of their share sale proceeds in Nordic Semiconductor shares, totalling approximately USD 13 million.

[1] https://newsweb.oslobors.no/message/649971

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#48

Post by K2h »

Moved to nordic nRF52840 based system (RAK) because of the 9mA average draw to run Meshtastic for LoRa radio at 900mhz. Longest link so far from flat land is about 40 miles. Moving up the mountain to see what improved line of site can do.

Nordic chip is super impressive and power efficient compared to ESP32

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#49

Post by pabs3 »

fra wrote: post #26
phoronixrly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have nice open-source SDKs for these nice products?

It's all on Github ( https://github.com/nordicsemiconductor ), but it is not technically open source as it is a modified BSD that does not let you use the SDKs with other chipsets.

The BLE library at least is plain BSD-3-Clause. Most of the other ones are the same, a few don't have licenses applied though. Which repo has the modified BSD license?

Re: Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault

#50

Post by DaveExeter »

tckr wrote: post #47
DaveExeter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't keep us guessing -- what was the bag?

Parsing the stock exchange notice [1], the three founders seem to have received 42 Million USD. If they had the same amount of shares, they received around 14 Million each. > The three founders of Memfault - CEO Francois Baldassari, CTO Chris Coleman and VP Developer Experience Tyler Hoffman – will reinvest 30% of their share sale proceeds in Nordic Semiconductor shares, totalling approximately USD 13 million. [1] ht…

Wow! That's an impressive bag!
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