Teensy 3.1 bare metal: Writing a USB driver (2014)
In this technical retrospective (2018), @kersny shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 106 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 15 comments
For anyone that might be interested, there were some efforts some time back to get Rust running on the Teensy[1][2][3][4], and although there have been no recent updates, the code is available to use and should still be relevant although there have been changes[5][6][7] in the meantime.
[1]: https://github.com/jamesmunns/teensy3-rs
[2]: https://branan.github.io/teensy/
[3]: https://disconnected.systems/blog/bare-metal-rust-on-the-teensy-3.1/
[4]: https://github.com/SimonSapin/teensy-clock
[5]: https://rust-embedded.github.io/book/
[6]: https://josh.robsonchase.com/embedded-bootstrapping/
[7]: https://github.com/rust-embedded/wg/issues/40
Slightly off topic: I highly recommend this micro controller for projects big and small. It packs quite a punch in terms of ram/cpu per dollar, lots of pins, great community and Paul was really cool online and at maker’s faire. Thank you Paul, Robin, and the rest of the community for a great product!
Off-off topic, as a web developer I love their super functional site. It even has an about page with pictures of Paul windsurfing haha.
Here’s a mirror for anyone interested:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180824210333/http://kevincuzner.com/2014/12/12/teensy-3-1-bare-metal-writing-a-usb-driver/
The article links to a web site that has excellent information on the low-level electrical and bit details of the USB protocol: http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/
Looks like HN hug of death - perhaps the server is running on a Teensy?