»Schedule // Workshop
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
10:00–16:00
Location: Workshop location TBA
Hands-On Embedded Rust
About
Tinker around with real hardware and take it home. You’ll be using a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, a three-channel color LED, and a compact 4-in-1 sensor that can detect RGB, ambient light, proximity, and gestures. To achieve this, you’ll use the powerful Embassy framework, which provides an async runtime designed for embedded devices. You’ll see: Embedded Rust is very accessible, easy to set up, and comes with great tooling.
We will work our way up from controlling a multi-color LED to connecting additional sensors and building a proximity-based traffic light that turns red if anything gets too close. We’ll also tackle connectivity and have you remotely control your device via WiFi and Bluetooth.
Description
In this workshop, you’ll learn how to develop embedded software projects in Rust with the Embassy framework and wire your own hardware prototypes on a breadboard. We want to empower you to build increasingly capable embedded devices through a guided series of exercises that come with ample pointers to further details. At the end of the workshop, you will know how to:
- Connect to and flash software onto a microcontroller
- Wire and control an RGB LED
- Use Embassy to run multiple concurrent firmware tasks
- Configure and use a light and gesture sensor via the I2C protocol
- Make use of the WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W
The workshop materials contain guided instructions, practical implementations, and theoretical remarks. There will be dedicated time for tinkering and customization. The instructors will help and guide you through the workshop.
Prerequisites
Participants are expected to bring a laptop with two USB-A ports (one for power, one for a data connection) to work on hands-on exercises. If you don’t have two USB-A ports, please bring an adapter. You’ll receive more detailed setup instructions via email ahead of the workshop.
We assume you are familiar with Rust and have heard of async Rust. You don’t need to have any experience with either embedded development or async. If you do want to read up before the event, have a look at these two talks by the instructors:
Mentor
Domenic Quirl
For the past few years, Domenic has been working on powering the world with Rust. He’s written firmware for an embedded PCB that measures various electrical and fluidic sensors in energy storage systems and is currently building a new team to develop software for even larger batteries.
When he is not working on renewable energy infrastructure, Domenic enjoys listening to and making music, discovering new restaurants and recipes, and chatting about all things Rust and technology at meetups or conferences.
Mentor
Björn Barwinski
Björn Barwinski’s main interest is in embedded systems, from microcontrollers to embedded Linux, as well as software architecture. He works at AMAZONE where he is building the central, pure Rust, on-board telemetry platform for the next generation of smart agricultural machines. Previously, when working as a consultant, he applied Rust in a wide range of contexts, from embedded and desktop applications to cloud services.
In his free time, Björn loves to play board games and enjoys doing winter sports.
Venue
Workshop Location TBA
Workshops will be held at a separate venue whose location will be announced later.