Summary

This chapter has given us the necessary information to start programming system support for the most popular local-bus communication interfaces available on embedded targets. Accessing peripherals and other microcontrollers in the same geographical location is one of the typical requirements of embedded systems interacting with sensors, actuators, and other devices in proximity of the target.

There already exist several implementations providing a higher level of abstraction to the transceivers analyzed here. This chapter, however, purposely focused on studying the behavior of the components from the closest possible point of view, to better understand the interface provided by the hardware manufacturer, and possibly provide the tools to design new ways of accessing the interfaces, tailored or optimized for a specific platform or scenario, while also understanding the choices behind some of the the protocol design characteristics.

In the next chapter, we'll provide a description of...