atsamd VS linux-embedded-hal

It’s definitely used for “nonsafety” stuff like infotainment. The ATSAMD HAL/PACs are probably the most complete embedded microcontroller family as far as Rust support goes, and that’s a part with heavy intent toward automotive use.

The Rust ATSAMD community has been very helpful getting me going. I've really become fond of RTIC as a way to get a little structure in my programs.

The atsamd-rs rust folks (https://github.com/atsamd-rs/atsamd) have made this way easier! Check out my top level comment!

I'm obviously biased, but as a starting point I would recommend getting an Arduino and following the process in the article. Once you have a blinking LED, try it again using a HAL like atsamd-rs/atsamd. Then try making it more complex: configure the clock and replace the delay implementation with something that takes a proper duration argument, add serial IO via the USB port so you can communicate with your program as it runs, connect some more LEDs or buttons and interact with them, or make some network requests.

The embedded-hal project supplies these for a wide variety of controllers, for SAMD specifically, https://github.com/atsamd-rs/atsamd .

No love for Microchip nee Atmel? https://github.com/atsamd-rs/atsamd

Am admittedly too inexperienced to properly weigh the pros and cons of various platforms, but I find the Rust support for certain embedded platforms to be particularly compelling.

https://github.com/atsamd-rs/atsamd

I have at least managed to get some literal blinkenlights doing what I want on various Adafruit boards with very little effort.

Makes sense. The EtherCAT master component can be loaded as a kernel module (for Etherlab), which I think is somewhat independent of the user code. The rust code interfaces with the driver through syscalls. There is some discussion about Rust with PREEMPT_RT here https://github.com/rust-embedded/linux-embedded-hal/issues/45 but it looks like it is still open.