Embedded File system

Storing data onto flash cards has become “the ” technology of recent times. If you own a cell phone or a digital camera you must have seen compact memory cards which store your files ( images or ringtones, data) on your gadgets. They are called flash cards and are new types of data devices unlike our conventional storage devices like the IDE hard drives of the 80’s and 90’s. If you can find a way to store data onto these devices, you can actually use them for making a product which is worth something in the market. For example, Robots can log data from analog sensors and record them onto a MMC/SD/compact flash card using a file system so that you can analyze that data on a computer running windows or Linux. This is useful in rescue robotics where it is hazardous for humans to enter and log the physical parameters of the environment. Robots can do this without much difficulty. Fat 16 is the standard for industrial devices which store data onto sd / MMC cards. Be it video, digital cameras or cellphones. Fat 16 is the most economical and widely used format to store data onto memory devices and hence is used as a standard embedded file system. I came across many examples of Fat 16 one of which was published in a magazine called circuitcellar, a magazine for the atmel AVR micrcontroller. You can get the source code from the ftp server of circuitcellar. The article can be purchased from them for a modest fee.