The course material and assignments do not match the course info.

In the course info is said that the student will gain experience writing low-level firmware to directly interface hardware with highly efficient, readable and portable design practices but there is not even one exercise that requires writing any software.

Also in the course info is said: Course assignments include writing firmware to interact and configure both the underlying ARM architecture and the MSP432 microcontroller platform. Every assignment is a Quiz. There is not even one practical assignment.

Worst of all, I have bought the MSP432 microcontroller expecting it to be useful in the Specialization that seems that will not exist.

If you expect this course to be as good as "Introduction to Embedded Systems", you'll be disapointed.

First problem is that he asks you to buy an MSP432 launchpad which is NEVER REQUIRED to use in this course. The course has 3 weeks of videos where Alex basically talks about C programming for embedded Systems.

And all 3 weeks you just need to answer some tests to pass. There are no labs to practice the knowledge. I did week 2 and 3 in one afternoon, literally.

And the second problem is that he says it's part of an specialization that simply DOESN'T EXISTS in Coursera.

So yes, there are important concepts in the course worth learning. But don't waste your money getting a certificate.

I was disappointed that we needed to purchase the TI dev board and there were no assignments using this in the class, only one example in a video. The first class was a lot better because the assignments provided practical use of what we were learning.

I knew that specialization will not be available, but I was looking for for the practical use in assigments, so I bought Launchpad.

Course is wonderful, full of intersting concepts and examples. But because of zero practical assigments there was no use of all this theoretical material.

To people looking forward to gettimg this course: do not buy any hardware, just enjoy intresting lectures on its own.

Information was good, however, there were several problems. First, several of the progress quizzes asked questions prior to presenting the information. As they were just progress quizzes, this wasn't a big deal, but it should have been resolved some time ago. Secondly, there were a few tests that contained questions on material not covered. Even Googling for answers did not yield answers to what they were asking. Unfortunately, there were so few questions on the test, that you could only miss one or else you would fail. There were consistently 2-3 of the questions with unknown answers. I ended up taking one test 7 times and only passed based on trial and error. When complete, they present the answers (kind of pointless) and I disagree with two of them. But who are you going to complain to? That brings me to my next point. This is clearly a free-running course. None of the comments were more recent than about three weeks. Even going back a year there were only a handful from any staff monitoring the questions. Of course, the majority of the questions were just pleas for someone to grade their submissions. It is unfortunate that there was no way to ask a real question and get a response from a staff member. Finally, the programming tests were effective, but the tasking was incredibly vague. There were bits and pieces of the tasks spread all over the assignment. Very unorganized and it was difficult to figure out everything that was required for the assignment.

The course is very expensive for the value ($100 !). The third and final week does not even include slides from the lectures. The previous course ("Introduction to Embedded Systems Software and Development Environment") gave the impression that the course series would include programming a target embedded system. I even purchased the board in anticipation. I am a long time user of Coursera, I feel misled, very dissatisfied and in general disappointed.

This is a very wonderful course. The instruction was perfectly delivered, and I can see myself going places with what I have learned here so far.

The perfect building of concepts by Mr. Alex. If you want to get your basics strong, this is the course you need to attend.

It`s ,as usual, an well presented and Informative Course, Recommended for every Beginner and Intermediate Level , Alex is a very good Instructor

No hands on programming assignments like first course.

A very good Course for professionals and students that is quite heavy of details, but refreshing visuals and Alex's clear explanation are very handy in understanding the concepts. Thank you so much Coursera, Alex and University of Colorado Boulder

It was a nice course but in comparison to the previous one it was lack in content. Also I bought the MSP texas instrument development board and I didn´t get to use it in this course. And when searching for the next course you cannot find it, so the MSP that was meant to be used in the course is not used at all.

The TI launchpad was never used. This is more of a basic level C programming classes than Embedded Systems or Hardware Architecture. Very odd advertising.

I wouldn't call this course Embedded SW&HW because it is more focused on software, only to rely on hardware when there is no other way of explaining things. For me, it was a valuable source of good practices and some programming hacks, but I believe it is so because I have already taken the course regarding embedded hardware. Read the reviews for other technical problems this course introduces, like not needing to buy development board and some quiz issues. All in all, for my first course on Coursera, it was a good experience.

Very Good course intermediate or even advance level for embedded systems programming. I highly recommend this course for who wants to learn writing good quality, maintainable and portable code

It was a very efficient course to refresh my knowledge on embedded systems. The lecturer's voice and the visuals that he has used were pretty supporting to concentrate on the videos.

This is one of the most helpful and relevant courses out there for embedded programming. Awesome stuff.

The course provides a concentrated content in embedded software programming and how to efficiently access memory using pointers, bit manipulation, and bit fields, and how to efficiently utilize the memory by using data structures design. Some content does not handled clearly like linked-lists topic. The course has only a lack of writing code assignments. I hope this lack will be avoided in the next specialization courses. I am looking forward to the next course!

The course material has little to do with embedded programming and more with simple, basic C programming.

But that is not why I am not giving more stars: whenever I was trying to answer the vaguely phrased questions, I had to guess what the teacher believed was the correct answer. Based on how you interpret the questions, some of the expected answers are plain wrong. And some I cannot even understand how could be possibly correct, no matter how I am trying to interpret the questions. All in all, it was a frustrating experience and I have learned next to nothing for £70 + the price of the board that I did not need to use even once during the course.

Course has only slides videos and quizzes, instructor speaks very fast, like reading, doesn't repeat information or show how it's used in real life. there are no assignment, nothing challenging. I passed the course, but I don't feel like I learned anything.

This course is using a dev kit that is not supported by Texas Instrument anymore... no document and no set up in the IDE is possible. This course becomes irrelevant !

there is no follow up to previously posted serious question. The hardware is obsolete and not available to purchase. I think the course is no longer being supported.

This course helped me a lot to understand the microcontroller I use in robotics and finally o can understand the embedded software that make them work and how. Alex did a great job at that while keeping things simple even the quizzes. Some practice exercises could have been given to help follow along with the programming but i guess that's home work for me to do. Overall a very good course to get the basic understanding of arm functions. Architecture hardware and programming basics covered in great lengths with examples, Alex did a great job trying to keep it simple and straight to the point.

Once again this course has proven to be extremely informative, offering an in-depth look at the most critical features and skills required for practical embedded systems development. I only hope that Alex will be able to continue to produce these incredible courses. I would like to finish the full sequence. Thank you, Dave

A well paced course with an excellent content. I'd wish that I could have a course of this type in my degree, since there's no kind of course. I'd like to thank Coursera, Alex Fosdick and UCB that played an important role to guarantee to me and all students of the platform a true five stars embedded systems course.