Arduino AVR Core is supposed to be already efficient, as the resulting code will run on AVR ATmega168 and ATmega328 MCUs with just 16 to 32KB of internal flash storage and 8 to 16 MHz clock speeds. But Nerd Ralph felt there was space for improvement as for instance the Blink sample takes 924 bytes of flash storage when compiled for the Arduino Uno. So he developed ArduinoShrink library with the same functions as Arduino AVR Core but enabling smaller and faster firmware files. The result is pretty impressive as we can see from the screenshot above with the Blink sample now taking just 196 bytes or an almost 80% reduction in size. So how was this feat achieved exactly? Ralph explains it in details in a blog post, but in a nutshell, the following main two steps were taken: Writing modular, self-contained code instead of providing a single static […]
ArduinoShrink library slashes code size, boosts speed of Arduino AVR firmware
