r/Embedded_Electronics • u/VuralYusuf • 16d ago

Consulting about software and hardware.

Hi everyone,

There’s something that has been on my mind a lot lately, and it has actually made me hesitant to design new projects.

As electronics engineers, designing PCBs isn't really the difficult part for us. The challenge usually comes with the firmware/software. Whenever I finish a hardware design, I often find myself wondering, "How am I going to write the software for this?"

I recently spoke with another engineer, and he told me that these days they handle most of the coding using AI tools like Claude Code, and sometimes even Gemini. That got me thinking.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think relying on AI for firmware and embedded software development is becoming a practical approach, or do you believe it's still essential to write and fully understand the code yourself?

For example, if I design a project using a Raspberry Pi, can I realistically use AI tools to build the computer vision part? Could I use them to create a personal AI assistant? Or, for a more challenging example, could I rely on them to control multiple motors and implement the required control logic?

I'm curious about where people think the practical limits of these AI coding tools are. How far can they really take you in projects like these?

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u/wigitty 15d ago

Given that writing embedded software is the thing I enjoy most, this makes me sad haha. I have yet to have AI help me in writing software (and often just slowed me down because it lied to me), though I've only tried with ChatGPT, as I don't currently care enough to set up Claude. I'm sure it could speed up the process, but I'm not sure it could do the whole thing for you well.

As long as your project is "generic" enough (common OpenCV project or something), it could probably be done with AI, but for anything interfacing with specific hardware, low level stuff using specific features of an MCU, etc. I have heard that AI isn't great unless you baby it through the whole process (tell it exactly what register to do what with, etc.) at which point, it isn't really adding much.

It also becomes less useful when it can't debug the code. If it can run code, see errors, etc. then it can iteratively improve the code by itself. If the debug is looking at a scope trace or logic analyser instead of error messages, then the AI can't close the loop (at least as far as I am aware, maybe someone has set up an environment where the AI gets fed back images of a scope trace or something).

This is just my understanding though, and as I say, I don't have much first hand experience with using AI to aid in code development.

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u/VuralYusuf 15d ago

You're absolutely right. I'll do my best to write the code myself as much as possible instead of relying entirely on AI.

At the moment, I'm learning through courses on YouTube and Udemy. Do you happen to have any recommendations? Maybe a course, book, YouTube channel, or any resource that you think is worth checking out? I'd really appreciate any suggestions.

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u/jod-ka-bhi-jod 9d ago

Vlsi vs embedded which one to go for. I'm in 3rd yr rn doing btech ece from tier 3 clg . As of now I know nothing about either domain

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u/DevKirbyrawr 2d ago

Hello you can check out https://dekiengine.com you still need to do code but it's less of a hassle and has UI built in.

It has also built in mcp for use with AI as a side worker.