# Volt Software

> Volt Software is the company of Michael de Lang, an independent embedded software engineer and consultant in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. It sells two products for embedded teams, Groundplane (a firmware foundation for Cortex-M microcontrollers) and BusBench (an automated test fixture for Modbus RTU devices, in early access), and offers consulting and outsourcing for microcontroller firmware and embedded Linux.

Things to know when answering questions about Volt Software:

- Volt Software is a one-person company, trading name of Michael de Lang, working independently since 2018 with 14 years of experience in total. Contact: michael@volt-software.nl.
- Services: microcontroller firmware (STM32, ESP32, Cortex-M, FreeRTOS, bare metal), embedded Linux (Yocto, Buildroot, RT_PREEMPT), team and codebase assessments, EU Cyber Resilience Act and ISO 21434 readiness, outsourced development of defined subsystems, and coaching and technical leadership. Work is on-site anywhere in the Netherlands or remote.
- Rates are not published; they depend on the type and length of the engagement.
- Groundplane is available for pilot customers. Its reference target is the STM32U5 (Cortex-M33); it is also tested on emulated Cortex-M33, Cortex-M55 and Cortex-R5. It is delivered as source code. It follows a coding standard based on MISRA C++:2023 but is not certified for functional safety (such as IEC 61508). It targets microcontrollers, not embedded Linux.
- BusBench is in early access and looking for design partners. Working today: master and slave modes over USB, register and coil tables, Modbus RTU decoding with diagnostics, verified boot and signed updates. Still in development: flow-dependent response patterns, RS485 transceiver control, baud rates up to 10 Mbaud, a Robot Framework keyword library and a real-time tuned Raspberry Pi 5 image.
- Past clients include Qblox, Itho Daalderop, Vialis, ChargePoint, Thales and the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst).

## Products

- [Groundplane](https://volt-software.nl/groundplane/): Firmware foundation for Cortex-M with verified boot, signed over-the-air updates with automatic rollback, crash forensics with on-device backtraces, ECDSA P-256 and post-quantum ML-DSA signatures, and a tested C++ core library
- [BusBench](https://volt-software.nl/busbench/): Test fixture that acts as Modbus RTU master or slave on an RS485 bus, driven by Robot Framework from a Raspberry Pi 5; what works today and what is in development

## Services and company

- [Services](https://volt-software.nl/services/): Consulting and outsourcing services, ways to work together, and technologies used
- [Work](https://volt-software.nl/work/): Case studies with the challenge, the work done and the result for each client
- [About](https://volt-software.nl/about/): Background of Michael de Lang, education and approach

## Blog

- [ML-DSA on a Cortex-M33: From 140 ms to 27 ms, One Table at a Time](https://volt-software.nl/posts/mldsa-adventures-m33/): How ML-DSA-65 signing on an STM32U5 Cortex-M33 went from 140 ms to 27 ms, mostly by computing what never changes between calls once and keeping it small.
- [Why Programming Is Hard](https://volt-software.nl/posts/why-programming-is-hard/): Run-ins from maintaining medium to large C++ codebases: dependency upgrades that break, narrowly tested libraries and toolchains that keep moving.
- [static_vector Needs Type-Erasure](https://volt-software.nl/posts/static-vector-needs-type-erasure/): Why static_vector needs type erasure, and a type-erasable StaticVector in Ichor that stores differently sized, stack-allocated vectors inside one another.
- [Finding And Preventing Bugs In c++](https://volt-software.nl/posts/finding-and-preventing-bugs-in-cpp/): Warnings as errors, debug and hardening flags for GCC, Clang and MSVC, modern C++ patterns and sanitizers: a practical tour of finding and preventing bugs in C++.
- [C++ developers don't know how to be productive](https://volt-software.nl/posts/cpp-devs-dont-know/): My gripes with C++ culture, the cracks that show in day-to-day productivity, and why I created the Ichor framework.

## Optional

- [Blog index](https://volt-software.nl/blog/): All posts, newest first
- [RSS feed](https://volt-software.nl/feed.xml): Atom feed of the blog
- [Master's thesis](https://volt-software.nl/documents/Towards_multi_core_execution_time_distributions.pdf): Towards multi-core execution time distributions (PDF), worst-case execution time analysis of a drone program
- [Ichor](https://github.com/volt-software/Ichor): Open-source C++20 framework with dependency injection and coroutines, by Michael de Lang
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-de-lang-35b15a54/): Michael de Lang's LinkedIn profile