I suspect it will come as no surprise that the second Embedded Linux Expo & Conference (ELEC), held October 27, 2000 in Westborough, MA (near Boston), was another great success! As in the case of last June's ELEC, the event was well attended from both the attendee and exhibitor perspective, and the day was permeated by a clear sense that Embedded Linux is truly “a market on fire.”

The… pre-conference “hands-on workshop”

This time, there was an additional day — the day prior to the one-day Conference & Expo — devoted to an all-day classroom-style Embedded Linux hands-on workshop. The session was conducted by Kevin Dankwardt of K Computing, a training and consulting firm. I had the pleasure of attending that session, and can heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about embedding Linux.

There were about 25 participants and we worked in groups of two to a lab bench. Get this: our project for the day was, working in teams of two, to convert the PC on each of our lab stations into a remotely controlled “headless” (i.e. no graphics output) embedded mp3 player. Basically, in the course of the day, we started from Red Hat Linux 6.2 sources and built a minimized kernel (starting from menuconfig) and filesystem, created and tested a system image, compressed and transferred the system image to a floppy diskette, booted from the floppy, and tested the resulting standalone mp3 player. Incidentally, we used BusyBox for embedded utilities, syslinux to load Linux, and GoAhead as the embedded webserver.

And it worked! By the end of the day, we were happily controlling our Linux-PC based mp3 player remotely via html-based play, pause, and stop buttons using the browser on another team's PC. Well, being an embedded Linux newbie myself, I must admit that it was *really* helpful to be teamed up with a Unix guru from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory (thanks, Mark!). In retrospect, I can't recall the last time I've learned so much in a single day!

If you'd like to see what you missed, you can view the slides from the seminar here.

Meanwhile back at the Expo & Conference

The expo/conference event was nicely organized, with one large room for “table-top” style vendor exhibits, and a second large room for the technical presentations. Sally Bixby, RTC event manager for the Embedded Linux Expo & Conference, provided these summary statistics . . .

• 40 exhibitors
  
• 150 technical conference attendees
  
• 250 overall attendees of the event
  
• 5 representatives of the press
  
• Attendees came from 15 states of the US, plus 5 countries: Norway, UK, Indonesia, Japan, and Canada

The exhibitors, who represented a broad range of software, hardware, tools, and services targeting the Embedded Linux market, included: ACT/Technico, AMIRIX Systems, Cirrus Logic, Cogent Computer Systems, Computer I/O Corporation, Cowboy Industries, CSP, DevelopOnline, Embedded Linux Consortium, The Embedded Community, EMJ Embedded Systems, Generic Logic, Green Hills Software, Highlander Engineering, I-Logix, Infomatec, Intrinsyc, Lanner Electronics, Lineo, LinuxDevices.com, Linux Journal, LynuxWorks, M-Systems, MEN Micro, Metro Link, MontaVista Software, Neoware Systems, NETsilicon, Objective Interface Systems, OnCore Systems, PalmPalm Technology, PEP Modular Computers, QNX Software Systems, Reasoning, Tilcon Software, TimeSys, Trolltech, Ultimate Solutions, WIN Enterprises, Xycom Automation.

The technical presentations

As in the case of the first ELEC event (last June), the technical presentations were high caliber, avoided blantant commercialism, and spanned a broad set of topics and issues on using Linux in embedded apps. As we did following the last conference, we are making the speakers' slide presentations available online. Please use the links provided here to view more information about each of the ELEC speakers and their talks, including (if available) the presentation slides:

Main keynote
The IBM Linux Wrist Watch Project
Alex Morrow; IBM Fellow, and project leader of the IBM Linux Wrist Watch project

The Embedded Debian Project
Frank Smith; Principal Software Designer, AMIRIX Systems

The MiniRTL Project — Hard Real-time Linux on a 1.44MB floppy
Nicholas McGuire; MiniRTL open source project leader

Using the X Window System in Embedded Systems
Stuart Anderson; Technical Director for X Window System Products, Metro Link

Afternoon keynote
Good Fork, Bad Fork — Examining the Limits of Open Source Software in the Embedded Market
Tim Bird; CTO, Lineo

Embedded PowerPC Linux
Dan Malek; Member of Technical Staff, MontaVista

Using Resource Kernel techniques to improve Linux QoS
Lonnie VanZandt; Senior Systems Engineer, TimeSys

Using Embedded Linux for Building Devices
Joe DeBlaquiere; Senior software engineer, Red Hat

I think all of us who attended the event in Westborough are looking forward to attending one or more of the future ELEC events. Currently the RTC Group has scheduled three ELEC's for 2001, adding a Japan event in addition to the eastern and western US events.

 
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