Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-02-20 | 
2 Comments to Read
Having used OpenEmbedded for a number of Embedded Linux projects over the past 5 years, it is interesting watching new users come on board. The most recent announcement came from Koan that the KaeilOS distribution will be joining the OpenEmbedded project. In the announcement, they summed up my thoughts well: We at KOAN wanted to [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-02-07 | 4 Comments to Read
One thing that works really well in Linux is support for USB Broadband modems. While it usually takes a little fiddling with PPP scripts, it is generally not too difficult to get working. One of the reasons for this is most modems implement a USB serial interface, and then the modem is controlled with standard [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-28 | 3 Comments to Read
The Socketcan test applications and utilities are now available in OpenEmbedded. The socketcan kernel modules already exist in OE. To build and deploy: get the latest version of OE metadata bitbake socketcan-utils-test scp <oedir>/build/angstrom-2008.1/tmp/deploy/glibc/ipk/<machine>/socketcan-utils-test_0.0+svnr917-r0_armv5te.ipk root@<target IP address>: And then on the target system: opkg install socketcan-utils-test_0.0+svnr917-r0_armv5te.ipk opkg files socketcan-utils-test /usr/bin/tst_bcm_rx_sendto /usr/bin/tst_bcm_tx_sendto /usr/bin/canlogserver /usr/bin/tst_raw_filter /usr/bin/tst_raw /usr/bin/isotpsniffer [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-26 | 11 Comments to Read
I just added a recipe to OpenEmbedded to build the Socketcan kernel modules from the socketcan SVN. So if you are using the latest OpenEmbedded metadata, you can: bitbake socketcan-modules scp <oedir>/build/angstrom-2008.1/tmp/deploy/glibc/ipk/<machine>/socketcan-modules_0.0+svnr917-r0_cm-x270.ipk root@<target IP address>: and then on the target system: opkg install socketcan-modules_0.0+svnr917-r0_cm-x270.ipk opkg files socketcan-modules Package socketcan-modules (0.0+svnr917-r0) is installed on root and [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-22 | 5 Comments to Read
As we look at new projects, both the Intel Atom and the TI OMAP3 processors generate considerable interest. As we have already shown, the OMAP3 does offer a considerable performance improvement over earlier generations of ARM CPUs. The following video I found on YouTube shows a similar comparison of a OMAP3 and Atom systems rendering [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-21 | 6 Comments to Read
Several of my customers have built applications using the GTK+ tookit. While GTK+ works fairly well for what we have done, I have been wondering how the performance compares on the new Omap3 processors from TI. As we are evaluating the OMAP3 for several projects, I did a simple comparison with an existing application. Below [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-17 | Be the First to Comment
During system verification for a customer, we noticed occasional failures when writing to a SD card using the Marvell PXA270 MMC/SD controller. The failure is a 4KB block of data is shifted on byte, where the first byte is duplicated and the last byte is dropped. The test app that found this problem is available [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-10 | 8 Comments to Read
With Linux, some of the things that seem like they should be easy are not — at least at first glance. For example, how do you read an interrupt driven GPIO input in a Linux application? With simpler microcontroller systems, this is straightforward, but with a system like Linux, you have to navigate through several [...]
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Recently I’ve been following the Vala programming language and using it some in embedded systems. Vala is a new programming language that aims to bring modern programming features to GNOME developers without imposing additional runtime requirements and without using a different ABI compared to applications and libraries written in C. A few notes and observations [...]
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I recently added Mono 2.2 RC1 to OpenEmbedded. The last usable version of Mono in Openembedded was 1.2.6, so this is a big step up. Lots of interesting things have been happening since then (like Full Static Compilation) that continue to make Mono interesting for embedded. There is still plenty to do yet such as [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on 2009-01-09 | 3 Comments to Read
Looking for a low cost, high functionality JTAG solution for the PXA270? As of several weeks ago, the openocd project now works with the Intel/Marvell PXA270 processor. There are a number of USB based JTAG debuggers available for under $100, so the cost is minimal. This article provides a brief overview of JTAG, suggestions for [...]
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This article presents a very nice overview of options to disable ssh host key checking. When working with embedded systems where you are constantly reloading the rootfs, it is really annoying to have to edit your ~/.ssh/known_hosts every time you update the rootfs on the target device. The solution is to simply disable host key [...]
Posted by Cliff Brake on | 5 Comments to Read
How does one implement support for printing in embedded systems? I recently had the opportunity to add printing support to an embedded Linux system. The device is an industrial touch screen powered by a Compulab cm-x270 module (PXA270 CPU), and runs a GTK+ application. The customer is implementing a device calibration system where customers bring [...]
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Recently the OpenEmbedded project has switched to the Git version control system. This is good news for many reasons. The obvious reasons are Git is faster than Monotone, handles branching better, has lots of nice features, larger user base, etc. Monotone has served us well, but as new tools become available, it is time to [...]
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The Linux input layer has made a lot of progress in recent years. When writing a new input driver (such as keyboard, trackball, etc), it is useful to be able to monitor input events using a test application. This article describes two ways to accomplish this using kernel input debugging, and the evtest utility. kernel [...]