A first at ESE Kongress:
Hackathon: Hands-on Embedded Rust  (German)

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The Rust programming language is becoming increasingly important in embedded development. However, the language is still uncharted territory for many developers. That’s why this year’s ESE Kongress features a six-hour Rust hackathon for the first time.

The ESE Hackathon “Developing Sensor Applications with Embedded Rust” will take place on 30 November starting at 9:30 a.m. under the guidance of experienced Embedded Rust developers. The event is open to all developers with some experience in Rust, as well as experienced C/C++ programmers who would like to gain hands-on experience with Rust. The goal of the hackathon is to collaboratively develop a first Rust project and to share experiences.

Goal: Monitoring air quality at the venue

The hackathon's specific challenge is for small teams to use Rust, Embassy, and async to develop an application for monitoring and displaying air quality at the ESE venue. The platform used for this is the “ESE 2026 Rust Devboard", provided specifically for the hackathon, which participants may keep at the end of the event. It is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2354 microcontroller with an Arm Cortex-M33 core, the Bosch BME690 gas sensor, and the 0.96-inch SSD1306 OLED display with 128 x 64 pixels. In addition, various buttons, an integrated debug probe, and pluggable peripherals provide flexibility in implementation.

As part of the project, participants work directly with the microcontroller, sensors, and display, focusing on topics such as sensor drivers, hardware control, and programming. Participants decide for themselves how to process and display the recorded measurement values and how to design the user interface.

Putting Rust to use in everyday life

Experienced embedded Rust developers from SystemScape and SSV Software will guide participants throughout the hackathon and assist with technical questions. This way, the hackathon offers the opportunity not only to learn about typical Rust concepts in theory but also to implement them directly on running hardware. This includes, among other things, the Fearless Concurrency approach. This approach helps developers write concurrent code in such a way that many common errors are prevented by the type system itself.

Awards for the best, most ingenious or most successful solutions

At the end of the hackathon, a panel of experts will evaluate the various sensor solutions and select the best embedded Rust hackers. The jury consists of Andreas Klinger, an independent trainer and multiple-time recipient of the ESE Kongress Best Speaker award; Jürgen Fitschen, Head of Research, Development and Innovation at SSV Software Systems; and Sebastian Gerstl, technical editor for embedded systems and embedded software engineering at Vogel Communications Group.

Requirements

Anyone interested in participating should have strong programming skills in C/C++ or a comparable language. Some prior experience with Rust is helpful, but it is not a prerequisite for participation.

Furthermore, participants will need a laptop with the Rust toolchain pre-installed, a USB-C cable, and a GitHub account for team collaboration. After the six-hour session, participants will be able to assess from their own experience how Rust can be used in everyday embedded systems. The knowledge gained can then be applied to other Cortex-M platforms as well.

Key facts about the ESE Hackathon

Julian Dickert
Julian Dickert is a co-founder and managing director of Systemscape GmbH, which specializes in Embedded Rust consulting, as well as OnMCU GmbH, which specializes in embedded testing. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Munich, has extensive experience in embedded software development, and has been working with the modern and secure programming language Rust for over six years. In his daily work, he applies his expertise in consulting, development, and test automation for embedded systems. Thanks to his deep practical experience with Embedded Rust, for both embedded systems and web and cloud applications, and his daily work on real-world challenges in client projects, he is ideally suited to share in-depth knowledge, proven patterns, and practical insights in this presentation.
Joel Schulz-Andres
Joel Schulz-Andres is a co-founder and managing director of Systemscape GmbH, a company specializing in embedded Rust consulting. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from RWTH Aachen University, has extensive experience in embedded software development, and has been working with the modern and secure programming language Rust for over six years. At Systemscape, he applies his expertise in consulting, development, and test automation for embedded systems. Thanks to his deep practical experience with Embedded Rust, particularly in the area of asynchronous programming, and his daily work on real-world challenges in client projects, Joel is ideally suited to share in-depth knowledge, proven patterns, and practical insights in this talk. His combination of technical expertise and consulting experience makes him an excellent speaker on this topic.
Juergen Fitschen

Jürgen Fitschen heads the Research, Development & Innovation department at SSV Software Systems GmbH. In recent years, he has been involved in the development of numerous IoT and embedded solutions, gaining extensive experience with internet-connected devices, distributed systems, and resource-constrained platforms. His focus is on practical technology development at the intersection of embedded software, wireless communication, and industrial IoT applications.
Juergen Fitschen

Christian Meusel is passionate about designing and developing embedded systems. Early in his career, he further developed a Java Virtual Machine for embedded Linux and real-time operating systems at TU Dresden. He assisted an industry partner with integrating this technology into their product, as well as with application development and training, to quickly onboard new developers and boost the team’s productivity. This was followed by a wide range of work and projects: whether in Java, C, assembly, scripting languages, or working with a soldering iron. Since 2016, he has been working as a freelancer and is increasingly assisting clients with the use of Rust in user space and on microcontrollers. He values this expressive language not least because it provides memory safety for systems that are too small for a Java Virtual Machine and also enables new developers to become productive quickly and confidently.
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