Building target images for three SBCs

Despite the GUI and documentation provided with ELDS, I did manage to configure and build kernels and root filesystems for the three single-board computers I'm using as test platforms for this series of reviews. The SBCs — an Ampro Little Board/P5x, a… (more…)

Overall assessment

I'm not sure what to make of Red Hat's strategy in releasing the Embedded Linux Developer Suite at this time. It has an unfinished feel, obvious to even the most casual user. The user interface reminds me of some quick-and-dirty GUIs I've written myself to meet temporary internal needs, rather than a professional user interface intended for customers. (more…)

A real-time virtual resource is an abstraction for resource sharing where the application task groups sharing a resource must meet timing constraints in the absence of knowledge of all the timing requirements of all the task groups, thus prohibiting a global schedulability analysis. (more…)

We present a methodology to perform fine-grained cycle-accurate timing measurements crossing the user-kernel boundary. Special attention is payed not to deteriorate the results by the measurement process itself. Next, we apply our methodology to obtain execution timing for the system entry and exit paths on x86-based Linux systems. (more…)

The purpose of benchmarking systems is most commonly to alow judgment if a system configuration is suitable for a given RT-spec. Aside from the fact that these RT-specs are most often quite vague, the problem of benchmarking is not well resolved in the currently available hard real-time solutions for Linux. (more…)

Intelligent robots are capable of handling complex tasks that includes recognition of vocal commands, logical inference, autonomous navigation and manipulation, etc. To accomplish intelligent behaviors, researchers have proposed a number of control software architectures such as tripodal schematic control architecture (TSCA). (more…)

Researchers, developers and system integrators require more openness in control systems in order to design, develop and rapidly integrate functionalities to fulfill new application requirements. Even if several robot control vendors provide their products with customized development tools, low cost and not proprietary solutions should be preferred to face the rapid market changes and to reduce control life… (more…)

Currently can combination of Linux and RTAI be run on various platforms. Yet the decision to choose one of them relies on many factors of which the stability of the microprocessor in various conditions is one but not the last of them, obviously. In this paper we want to present the development project where at start the combination Intel StrongARM/Linux/RTAI seemed very reliable and promising, at least by… (more…)

Snapshot is to create an instant image of a file system. Creating a snapshot image with little processing and space overheads is critical to provide the continuous data service during backup. (more…)

The `C-API Simulink Target for RT-Linux' (CAPI_STRTL) is an application developed to extend the functionality of the original `Simulink target for RT-Linux' (STRTL) by providing the user with full parameter tuning and signal access, of a real time application running in a RT-Linux kernel, independent of the Simulink/MATLAB interface. (more…)

Real-time embedded systems used to be hand tailored to fit requirements and constraints of applications. But the increasing complexity of applications and the rapid evolution of hardware make these practices unbearable to face nowadays industrial reality with very fast evolution of requirements. (more…)

As part of a Cambridge-Massachusetts Institute funded project a set of teaching resources is being developed around the ARM based Balloon Board microcomputer. The system is being designed to give students and academics a preinstalled system with support material and low cost hardware for control and data acquisition projects. (more…)

The Real-Time Driver Model (RTDM) is an approach to unify the interfaces for developing device drivers and associated applications under real-time Linux. The device models supported by RTDM will be introduced in this paper. An overview of the low and high level APIs will be given and the concept of device profiles for defining generic device interfaces will be presented. (more…)

This paper investigates the possibility of using standard, low-cost, widely used FireWire as a new generation fieldbus medium for real-time distributed control applications. A real-time software subsystem, RT-FireWire was designed that can, in combination with Linux-based real-time operating system, provide hard real-time communication over FireWire. (more…)

WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) are considered the sensing technology of the future. Many experimental systems have been designed to create a WSN to collect environment data and accessed via a web-interface. But almost WSN are build on the special technology including the software and hardware. (more…)