Embedded Books

I have read several MIPS Application Books, and found Phil's Book is more practicle for us. With the great help from his book, I have finished designing IDT MIPS 79RC32334 BSP and Cache application, we design MIPS Test Bench for TeleCom IC function validation before Silicon tape out. While the reader should has some hardware background to have the better understanding, this book gives out detailed introduction for Cache/un-cacheable space Interrupt handle, How to override the low level library, such as use UART as debug tool, how to design vsprint and write your own printf() library, For nested interrupt and some skills for Assembly code and C code cross invoke, In one word, it is a great book for MIPS firmware engineer or Embedded SW engineer to develop their Embedded System. For some new beginner and SW engineer, they should read the MIPS data sheet carefully first, then to read this book will be more effective.
MIPS has wide application, such as Linux server and Network Printer, it has powerful pipeline and cache function.
In order to share my experience with those MIPS funs, I created my web-site to provide online help, but I will thank Phil and his great book first, because he ramp me up from a new beginer to an experienced MIPS Firmware Engineer.

Thanks,
Simon

This book offers an overview of the assembler language, designed for the family of mips processors r2000 and r3000 (nothing about r4000 and r6000 series). It also shows common C-functions translated in assembler. It explains, in general guidelines, the internal architecture of the r2000 processor thus not as deep as D. Patterson's books.

Beyond this, the text is a bit confused, the chapters don't lead the reader to any meaningful point, offering pieces of explanations thought for an already instructed reader. In fact a beginner won't find here a good introduction to the subject. E.g. at the very beginning, when the author deals with the structure of the registers (with many long, meaningless words without any explanation), does anybody know what a 'C0_BADVA' is? After that it goes along, is a single page, to the stack and the initialization of the eproms.

If, on the other side, the reader already knows the subject, this book is a good and useful giude when he needs source codes and hits for his code writing. If someone wonders where a mips processor can be found... Uhm.. In a Playstation or in a handheld.

Well this text is particulary suitable for courses dealing with computer science. Last but not least the price. In my humble opinion si quite hight for a 350 page-long book.

Very good introduction and high-level overview of the different mobile "primary" application platforms (Symbian/C++, JavaME, and WinMob). The book even dedicates chapters to Maemo Linux and Qtopia Greenphone -- although, as a critique, I doubt too many mobile developers would currently be focusing on either one of those OS platforms. Given today's environment, it would have been nice to see some mention of Apple's CodeX or Google Android; but, the book was published in 2007 when those platforms were just starting to bubble up. Giving the book an additional star due to its coverage of Device Discovery, P2P, Power Consumption considerations during design, and Cross-Layer Communication. If you are new to -- or just interested in -- mobile application design, this is a great resource to start with to see how vast the playing field is....and what the future may hold.

I have more than 6 years experience in this industry and can tell that this is the first book of this kind I saw. It will allow you to get your own hands-on experience with many different platforms, from Series 60 to Qtopia. Due to real programming examples, it is very praxis oriented, but also with several scientific aspect rising open questions. And all this without any "hypes" or "bubbles", as you maybe know from other books about "mobile". If you are an expert, it will also allow you to get a piratical impression of other platforms in a short time. So, in the nutshell, this books is worth each $$ use spent on it! Great book!

This book belongs on the bookshelf of every programmer engaged in time-triggered embedded systems.

No that's wrong, it belongs on their desk - it should have post-it notes hanging out the sides, the binding should be broken and numerous stains of coffee should mar the pages. It is the most pragmatic guide to building embedded systems programs I've seen in my 25+ years of experience with such systems.

This book lives up to the dreams and goals of the patterns community; namely the capturing of wisdom in a way that can be shared with others. Pont's collection of patterns oozes wisdom on each page, from concept to implementation. The topical organization of patterns ranges from early project development issues such as selection of the right microcontroller to detail design questions of interfacing to switches, keypads, LED's and LCD panels. Along the way Pont tackles some of the most baffling topics in embedded systems - co-operative, pre-emptive and shared-clock schedulers; and the interfacing of multi-processor systems.

If you are a programmer new to embedded systems development, then careful, methodical study, will rapidly help you through multiple learning curves - time-based architectures; digital, analog and electromechanical sub-systems often connected to microcontrollers; interfacing to the variety of communications protocols you might encounter; data acquisition; control strategies; feedback systems; and so much more.

If you have experience building embedded systems then this is a book that deserves to be treated as a reference book or a handbook - that is, it should be browsed from cover to cover to discover the comprehensive nature of topics; then as new work is assigned to you, or new problems arise, it should be the first book you consult for ideas, pointers and solutions.

This book has a depth that suggests many years of research. It brings together and cross-correlates so many diverse topics, I suspect it was difficult to write. I appreciate the hard work and dedication it must have taken to finish this project. I thank Michael Pont, as with this book, he has made my job easier.

Whether you have to make minor adjustment to existing code - or design one starting with a blank screen - this books covers in succinct way all tasks any embedded software engineer is likely to come across.

However, the author of the book tends to cut-and-paste too much of prduct specification by chip vendors.

I'm a beginner in embedded development on Linux. I find the book very good. It's compact, very well written and has detailed descriptions of the procedures to building embedded Linux systems.

This book was a highly recommended reference book at my previous job at an embedded systems company. As the title of the book suggests, this text gives the reader a good foundation on the concepts required to build an embedded Linux system.

On the one hand, a typical Linux user is going to install a pre-built package (Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, etc) on pre-built PC. This book isn't for them - there are plenty of books for learning and using Linux.

On the other hand, embedded systems developers often have a good, working toolchain from a vendor like WindRiver or DataLight. This book isn't necessarily for them, either.

But if you're building your own system: your own DIO controllers, perhaps with a mix of flash drives and conventional storage, perhaps remote booting ... and if you've decided to use Open Source as your platform ...
then you NEED this book.

There simply isn't any other text out there that covers the breadth of subjects (toolchain, kernel build, kernel tailoring, media types, etc etc etc) with the wealth of details as this book.

It's an excellent book, and an indispensible resource.

It would be a good guide to a person to prepare for a project to develop embedded linux system. It gives you the information what is necessar, what is work well and how to get them. But you should have some experience on linux language.

Book is based on 2.4 kernel. Since we are currently at 2.6 kernel this book does seem to have outdated information

I bought this book after reading some reviews which hinted that this book would be helpful for software developers of all systems and not just embedded ones. I have to admit I have almost no practical experience with C++, but I have substantial insights into OOD.
I think this book is singularly targeted towards embedded developers, especially the ones who are into the crux of critical systems. I'm into regular OOD for PC/Web applications, and except for the first 2-3 chapters, I thought the book was impractical in today's age of environments such as .NET and high-performance hardware. This is a highly theoretical book which demands a massive change and learning curve for traditional developers.
This, however, does not undermine State Machines. State Machines, if implemented right, can work wonders for regular apps. I found the Windows Workflow Foundation to be an excellent example of practical implementation of State Machines; it does have its limitations though and is meant for high-level processes. I am probably just going to stick to State Tables and such for a simplistic model with easy debugging capabilities.
I found the UML 2 for Dummies much more practical.

Firstly: I am sorry about my English.
I think that this book is really useful and very interesting for each interesting in C++/C. And want write programs with HSM behind as behavior rules of program.
For conclusion: Useful and easy reading book.

First prior to reading this book, I was finding the title unattractive. I did not know what statecharts were and what Quantum programming was. By reading this book, I have learn that statecharts were special finite state machines that could be built by deriving them from more general FSM similar to how OO classes inheritance works.

Quantum is the name of the presented framework in the book. The title is misleading because I though that Quantum programming was some weird new programming technique that I was not aware and did not care to learn. I think that it is important to find catchy names to market software but one negative point of the book, is that the author spend way too much pages to describe similarities between quantum physics and his framework to justify the name 'Quantum' for his framework. Programmers are not all quantum physics enthusiasts!

Concerning the book content, the author presents the C++ classes implementing the statecharts framework and a set of classes to make threads driven by statecharts collaborate together by communicating with message queues. It is an interesting reading and there are many places where you can learn good programming tricks by seeing the author code. However, I am not sure that I would want to use the framework because it is complex. Let me clarify what I mean. It is not the framework that is complex but implementing statecharts is complex. I believe that the author made his code as simple as possible to implement statecharts. Personally, I still have to work on a problem where a simple FSM will not be enough.

The best feature of the book is its presentation of a base class to implement FSMs and compares it with traditional table based FSMs and a OO FSM like the one presented in the Design Pattern book and it is highly convincing that his FSM implementation is superior to the other 2 in size, performance and ease of maintenance. Another interesting topic is the author method to emulate C++ in C. You cannot beat the real thing with an emulation but when you have to go write C and you are used to do OO programming, this method might become handy.

I would say that for the FSM pattern and the C++ in C methodology alone, even if it represents a small proportion of pages in the book, it justifies the purchase of this book.

Since I saw quite a few excellent reviews on Amazon as well as on some other websites, I decided to purchase the book hoping it would give me some fresh new ideas in implementing FSM for real-time embedded system. I was quite disappointed when I received the book and had a chance to read it. Here are my own personal comments:

- The text is too verbose and quite disorganized. Reading this I had the feeling of listening to someone rambling on and on.

- The concept is unique and quite interesting. However, it is useless as far as embedded system implementation. Think of how you are going to debug this in a real-time environment. It would be a nightmare!

- Lots of the detailed codings are encapsulated by the house-keeping codes. This is a definitely NO-NO for embedded system application if one must know every single line of executable code. (You have to know if you want to do size and speed optimization.)

- It would be a nightmare to maintain an application written using this concept. It is just not consistent with the natural flow of thinking. Don't forget that the human element can never be detached from any application.

- Debugging the state machine written using this concept is extremely difficult. (Believe me! I tried.) The concept of simply returning to the parent state if no special handling is required can be very very misleading during real-time debugging.

Simply put, if you want to read some new interesting idea, this book is for you. But if you are looking for practical idea to apply to your SW development project, I suggest you look elsewhere. The 5-star rating is very very misleading. If you are still curious, you might want to check it out first at your local Barnes&Nobles or Border before buying.

(In case anyone wonders about my background, I've been doing software development & architecture since 1988.)

Book is excellent in covering state machines and has many practical examples. It did not come short in covering different approaches used by real programmers to implement STMs. In second half of the book author is going into more advanced stuff and proposes what seems like an original new idea of Quantum Programming. Word "Quantum" in itself is very misleading in this context plus there is nothing new in tackling complexities of the real world dependencies in terms of State Machines. In fact author going further in creating entire new Object Oriented methodology with State Machine flavor. I doubt if most of practitioners will find more advanced chapters practically applicable, but it does not in any means reduces the values of the book as whole.

I truly enjoyed reading this book. Ms. Skiba takes the time to describe a completely different perspective on the weeks and months leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the invasion itself. This is a memoir of her time in Iraq, not a book of the stories she wrote as a reporter. This allows her to shine a light on the often ignored experiences of the soldiers when they are not in combat. The preparation, daily grind, and life of a soldier are laid out for the reader. She brings an outsiders view to the military and then allows the reader to follow her progression inside the days and lives of the men in the 101st. She is almost surprisingly blunt about her personal feelings, observations, and relationships, but the honesty is refreshing.

In 2007, it's difficult to remember the situation in 2003. Her focus and fear of weapons of mass destruction seems almost petty today, but thinking back, it was such a prevalent part of the build up and invasion, it's amazing to see the fear they struck in the men and women actually searching for them. From a journalism perspective, this event was arguably the defining moment in war reporting in the last 40 years. To watch Ms. Skiba's experiences as a reporter preparing for and entering war zone, and an awfully sandy one at that, were both different and new.

"Sister In The Band Of Brothers" is just one person's experience, but that experience is quite compelling and plenty funny. I'd strongly recommend this book, it makes for an overall great read.

After reading the Nathanial Fick book, I was starving for more on the Iraqi war subject. Skiba's book was more about her, and less about the war. I found the Evan Wright embedded reporter story to be far more interesting that Skiba's.

As I watched the "shock and awe" unfold on the news channels, knowing my husband would soon be heading up into Iraq, I never knew at that moment there would be someone amongst my husband and his fellow commrades who would be the link between us at home and our loved ones "over there". As the weeks went by, I discovered that there was a journalist by the name of Katherine Skiba who was telling the stories of our loved ones. This book was a great read. My husband was one of the soldiers within the battalion she was embedded in, and it was funny to read her take on some of the stories, that my husband had told me about. This book gave me more of an idea of life out there, in ways that my husband wasn't able to explain to me, for different reasons. Thanks Katherine!!

In Sister in the Band of Brothers, author Katherine Skiba emerges as stronger and more tenacious than she perceives herself. A seasoned international journalist, she vividly tells of her adventures as an embedded reporter with the 101st Airborne. She relates the story of her participation in the landmark, but now familiar, program utilizing embedded journalists among the troops in the Iraqi war zone and the stories of those serving in the U.S. military around her. Skiba's writing is insightful, entertaining, and (thankfully) without political commentary. Beginning with her motivations and first inklings toward participation in the program, to journalist boot camp, to the distant and dangerous Iraqi war zone and home again, she skillfully exposes very human, intimate, and often humorous insights of herself and those she interacts with and observes. Skiba's lively memoir is a refreshing break from the typical highly politicized news of the war in Iraq that is de rigueur. Accolades to the author for leaving normalcy behind, embracing the discomforts, and accepting the risks that make our view of the war in Iraq from this vantage point possible!

Milwaukee journalist Katherine Skiba has a taste for adventure, so she volunteered to be part of the US Army's "embed" program. Following a tough mini-bootcamp and some immunizations that sounded worse, she became part of a military unit. She flew over with the soldiers. She ate and sometimes slept with them. And along the way, she wrote dispatches to her home paper.

Skiba's no heroic figure. She accepts a male comrade's offer to pack up her gear (and realizes she's got a stack of personal items sitting around). She smokes. She oversleeps. She goes overboard telling everyone she meets about a snake in her sleeping bag. And yet she manages to complete her mission successfully.

Skiba's midwestern Catholic background seems to help her fit in, although she reports clashes with mean officers and uncomprehending soldiers. At times she seems amazingly naive, as when she speculates that surely others havae overslept and broken rules -- there are so many regulations in this army! She told an off-clor joke, over and over, not realizing the full meaning till she got home and told her husband. And she was surprised to learn about co-ed sleeping arrangements.

She returns home, realizing she has a new perspective. Her husband's SUV smashed into her car? No big deal. A soldier's wife admires her looks and she says, "I didn't look like this in Iraq."

Skiba's book was published by a university press, which means the writing style comes across as more sedate than would be the case with a mass audience publisher, such as Harper's. I'd expect less verbosity from a journalist and perhaps a lot more stories.

But I admire Katherine Skiba for rising to the challenge. In my experience, adventure is something you're glad you did -- afterward. So I admire her for doing something I wish I could do myself...in my next lifetime.

The book walks you through all the steps of embedded systems development before going into the details of RTOS, which is the main focus of the book. It is a great book for the intended readers of the book, as stated up front in the book.

This book wasted pages with big fonts and hallow tables. For example this book states create_thread() function create a thread. No trace on how it create a thread, what create_thread() function actually do!!. The same kind of descriptions about all RTOS calls. This book might better appeal if it focuses on inner working of RTOS than vague descriptions about it.

This book is really well done. The explanations and descriptions seem simple, but I think that's only because they ARE well done.

This book can be equally useful for both novice and intermediate programmers. Experts in RTOS's may want something a little less instructive and more like a "reference" manual, but don't be fooled by that statement and over-estimate your skills. If you can't completely describe semiphore types, deadlock breaking strategies and timing wheels, you may still need this book.

This book is a good introduction to readers who are beginners in the world of embedded programming and real-time operating systems. A real-time OS facilitates the creation of real-time systems, but does not guarantee that they are real-time. Nor does an RTOS necessarily have high throughput. Instead, they enable, through specialized scheduling algorithms and deterministic behavior, the guarantee that system deadlines can be met. Thus a real-time OS is valued more for how quickly it can respond to an event than for the total amount of work it can do.
This book, written by a senior architect at Wind River Systems, is very VxWorks centric. This is OK, since VxWorks is one of the better commercial real-time operating systems out there, having been on the scene in various forms since 1983. This book will introduce you to all of the terminology you will need to be familiar with before you write code that uses VxWorks. I highly recommend it for anybody who is or is planning to get involved in embedded systems. Since so many robot designers end up programming with VxWorks, I highly recommend it especially to them. The concepts of scheduling, tasks, semaphores, queues, exceptions, and timers are all covered very well, even for those readers who have no previous exposure to operating systems in general. There is plenty of pseudocode and instructive diagrams. However, when it comes to actually writing an embedded system with VxWorks, no book that I know of actually gives out that kind of knowledge. There is no substitute to attaching yourself to a person experienced in this sort of work and learning by example. But first, read this book so that you understand what it is that they are teaching you. For real newbies, read "Designing Embedded Hardware" to get an idea of what devices make up an embedded system, and then "Programming Embedded Systems with C and C++" to get an idea of how these devices are controlled. At that point, you will be ready for this book.

Please have a look before you buy! Be sure to check
out the vacuous tables that inform us, for example,
that the "Suspend" operation"Suspends a task" and
so on for seven other task-related operations. This
is a quibble, but I think the lack of content in the
tables reflects a grave shortcoming of the book as
a whole: there's just not much there. In my opinion
part of the problem is lack of specificity. I wish
that the authors had focused on a single real operating
system (e.g. VxWorks) with actual code examples rather
attempting the very difficult task of covering the
entire real-time operating system landscape.

the book does not contain enough information to be usefull. I would recommend other books such as "building Embedded Linux Systems"

Hey embedded Linux developers,

This book is great. The simple examples clearly illustrate how to get a development system up and running, then how to develop simple device drivers to exercise hardware. I learned from these examples and put them to work on my project immediately. I read the other reviews below and don't know why they didn't like this book, did they even read it?

Its a great book, buy it now (its the best [money]spent on embedded Linux available).

Satisfied Customer

As of 4/2004, the book relies on a free distribution of Hard Hat linux that is no longer available on Montavista's site (as they charge $25K for a single seat, I guess they felt they were giving too much away ;-) HOWEVER: Hollanaugh has copies of them with all of his scripts on his site, so look for them there. His scripts are also now modified to point to the new locations. Though even this distribution is somewhat out of date, this book does a pretty reasonable job of getting you through it all. I found finding free (useful, current) distributions of embedded linux very hard to find but eventually did.. Check out www.denx.de and store.yahoo.com/snapgear/snemlidi.html for current multiplatform distributions. The denx distribution ELDK appears to have morphed from the original Hard Hat distibution as many of the utilities still exist, I used this and was able to "generally" follow along. It's a more recent distribution and supports more platforms (at least for the PPC). I would definately repurchase this book again..
His site is:
http://www.embeddedlinuxinterfacing.com/overview.shtml

This book is clearly the best reference I have for embedded projects under linux; future and present inclusive. The author covers USB device integration quite well, and gives a well worded approach to mounting and setting up your own usb-devfs.
Along with clear examples, the author mainly tries to format the text from an on-lookers prospective to an "embedded ski lift monitor" project- i.e. "My data from working along-side the team" Great effort there-
Another pro to this book is that there are many code samples (all but one I got working, first try) that keep the flow of the book geared towards a beginning hardware-level programmer, with teach by example in mind.
The biggest down side to the text is the beginning material about setting up the workspace environment. A friend tried the same book, and had much trouble simply because they didn't know what pitfalls to expect when installing Debian. Although, the setup does allow for multiple-processor compilations of source code. A Great plus, and another reason for me using the book as a reference.

Out of all the good and bad, this book earned the 4 star rating and with honors. If you want a place to begin embedded systems, and aren't weary of installing a fresh copy of an older model of Debian, have at this book!
Hope this helps-

Dr. Hollabaugh has certainly shed useful light on the concept of embedded linux. He intelligently sets the stage and walk you through real steps for deploying a fully embedded linux control and monitoring system. The diagram, table, and code examples will leave you with a very clear understanding of the subject matter (providing you have some background with linux development). Personally, I was totally captivated and found myself extremely happy that I have chosen this book to help thrust foward my own intelligence of embedded linux. This book and website....has become a primary reference for future embedded linux application.

To follow up on the printing. The copy I got was very, very bad. Pretty much every page has multiple printing errors making the book very difficult to read and in some places you need to understand the content already to make headway.

The book used to ship with a CD. Now there's a sheet saying to go look at phptr.com for a download. I could not find the CD download, but I did find the book in pdf. At least the pdf can be read.

Bad job Prentice Hall!

Be aware. The current printing of this book has some serious typesetting problems. Nearly every page has "garbled" text where letters overlap. The publisher responded by stating: "The book which you are referring is now temporary unavailable due to major printing errors."

I recommend this book not only to those who are just beginning to use eCos but also ameatures in the world of RTOS. The audience is treated like a 'child' as Anthony goes on to explain step by step. The accompanying software is complete and gets perfectly installed as described.
There are good illustrations accompanying the text that help in understanding the text. It is written more like a story rather than a manual, so it is difficult to put it down once you start reading it.

This book gives a step by step method of getting an embedded system up and running using ecos OS. Explains very well in simple terminology "how to put various components together to create what you need". In short, a very good book on ecos in nutshell.

I am happy to report that the printing problems have finally been resolved. I have reviewed the latest copies of the book and the text seems fine.

Sorry about this.

Thanks,
Anthony Massa

======
======
I apologize for the lack of effort on the part of the publisher. Please know that I have nothing to do with the publishing process at this point. I have been begging Prentice Hall to fix these errors and have forwarded on the comments I have received from readers. It seems these comments are falling on deaf ears. Please contact Prentice Hall directly if you receive a book that contains printing errors.

I hope the content in the book is still valuable to all eCos developers.

Thanks,
Anthony

OK for basic knowledge - not enough ROM, JTAG, and I/O. Not to mention too little on alternative link maps and data storage
methodologies for mimimal motion

PROs:
- The book covers the right topics presented in a sensible logical progression.

- The book comes with a good chunk of real, functional source code that can be profitably studied (the main value of this book imo).

CONs:
- Like every single CMP (fomerly R&D) book, this one is rather poorly written and sports a good number of ridiculous typos that
a run through a spellchecker would fix.
- The book is introductory, not indepth.
- Nitpicking: binding's bad, crack the book open once and it starts falling apart.

Even though it is suggested in the Introduction that this book targets both programming novices and competent general-purpose programmers entering the embedded realm, I feel that only the latter group stands to benefit here; a total neophyte will be confused by the disjointed, imprecise, and sometimes misleading writing. But someone already familiar with the universally applicable computing basics can probably compensate for writing deficiencies while picking a number of useful things specific to the embedded area; in that respect the book is instructive.

Overall, it's kind of like the Labrosse book (on uCos) -- a painful read significatly compensated by the opportunity to study the attached source code. Another comparable book is Barr's "Programming Embedded Systems in C and C++", which is by an order of magnitude better written but at the same time somewhat skimpier than this one.

Lacks alternative scheduling, decent memory layout, data placement for minimal motion, deterministic I/O - can be used for hobbiest - I don't recommend this book for education. It is a good novelty item and not quite a 'Dan Saks how do code so you can't maintain it' book. But, close.

Ed Sutter does a great job of explaining the inner workings of embedded systems, provides knowledgeable experience, and practical solutions for the embedded world.

Experienced embedded designers will find this book contains an excellent interface that is portable (and more importantly useful!) across a board range of processor architectures, while anyone new to embedded systems (especially those that start from the non-embedded world of the desktop PC) will learn a great deal about the workings of the embedded world.

The book focuses on the Micromonitor embedded boot monitor. However, since this boot monitor contains Xmodem support, ethernet support, tftp boot capability etc, the reader is exposed to many common embedded system tools and functionality. I have used Micromonitor on PowerPC and ColdFire boards and have learnt much more than about Micromonitor. Micromonitor can be built and used from both Windows and Linux systems (I've tested both).

This is an excellent book - thanks Ed.

As a hardware engineer using mostly PowerPC assembly, I bought this book at the ESC in S.F. looking to learn embedded C programming techniques. Though the book itself is informative, the micro-monitor software on the included CD-ROM is what really makes this book worth the money. It's got a serial port command line interface, an ethernet driver (pseudo-sniffer), a flash-file system etc., and I was able to get it up and running pretty much out of the box (the GNU tools and the makefile are a little testy, but the package is complete).
I had help from our senior software engineer, but I worked pretty hard learning and porting the code. I advise anyone interested in using this software to get one of the evaluation boards (numerous platforms are supported) such as Motorola's MPC8XXFADS board, and get it up and running before attempting a port. A good low-level debugger (BDM interface) helps huge.
If you're not a fluent C-programmer, get a good book (Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C- Programming Language" is what I used). This software will force you to learn it well. Don't depend on the text for answers. You've got to read a lot of source code.
I'm very pleased with what I've learned, and with the functionality and robustness of the software. It was worth the effort. Our senior software engineer is impressed with the overall program design as well.
So get ready to get your hands dirty...