Today I built a bare-metal embedded firmware stop watch on the ATmega328, focusing on clean architecture and driver-based design.
The firmware uses a Timer0 interrupt to generate a precise time base (milliseconds, seconds, and minutes) and displays the output on an I²C SSD1306 OLED. Two push buttons handle START/STOP and RESET, with real-time status updates shown directly on the display.
What I intentionally focused on in this project:
• Bare-metal programming (no HAL, no Arduino libraries)
• Modular driver / API design for I²C, OLED, buttons, and timer
• Interrupt-driven timing instead of delay-based logic
• Clear separation between drivers and application firmware
This project reinforced an important embedded concept for me:
👉 firmware is not just about making it work, but about designing reusable, structured code that scales.
Next step: improving the UI with larger fonts and refining the stopwatch logic into a reusable module.
Skills involved:
Embedded C | AVR | Bare-Metal Firmware | Timer Interrupts | I²C | SSD1306 OLED | Driver Development
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