The Embedded World Conference 2012 will taken place on the February 28 – March 1 in Nuremberg, Germany. There will be over 1,000 exhibitors for the tenth conference (it started in 2003) showcasing their new products and solutions for the embedded markets. Beyond the exhibition, there will also be 13 classes and 22 sessions during those 3 days. February 28th 2012 Classes: 09:30 – 15:30 – Modeling Behavior with UML: Interactions and Statecharts by Dr. Bruce Douglass, IBM 16:00 – 17:00 – Agile Systems Engineering by Dr. Bruce Douglass, IBM 09:30 – 18:00 – Introduction to Real-Time Operating Systems by Dr. David Kalinsky, D. Kalinsky Associates 09:30 – 18:00 – Hands-on-Workshop Safety Critical Linux – Automated debugging and code screening with formal methods by Prof. Nicholas Mc Guire, OSADL Safety Critical Linux Working Group and Andreas Platschek, OpenTech. 09:30 – 16:30 – Cryptography and embedded Security – The Workshop chaired […]
Microsoft Provides Windows 8 On ARM Technical Details
Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, has written a long blog post entitled “Building Windows for the ARM processor architecture” where he explains how Windows On ARM (WOA) will be deployed, the steps they took to develop it and what developers can do to program or port existing apps to Windows 8. Here are some keys and interesting points I noted: WOA and Windows 8 for x86/64 PCs will ship at the same time and the user experience should be the same for consumers on both platform. WOA PCs will be powered by Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Qualcomm processors. Microsoft will release an Unified OS Binary for WOA – That means one binary will run on all platforms (be it TI, Nvidia or Qualcomm). That seems impressive, and something Linux is not capable of, although much work is done on that and a unified linux kernel should […]
Debugging Embedded Linux with GDBserver and Insight (gdb GUI)
Although it it sometimes possible to debug applications using GDB (The GNU Debugger) on the target boards, there is often not enough memory available to run GDB on embedded systems running Linux. To work around this issue, you can use gdbserver to perform remote debugging. Installing and running gdbserver on the target board First of all you need to install gdbserver on the target board. Assuming you use a Debian based distribution:
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apt-get install gdbserver |
If you distribution, does not have binary repository, you can download gdb source code and cross-compile gdbserver. Once gdbserver is installed, (cross-)compile your application in debug mode and start gdbserver as follows:
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gdbserver target_ip:target_port prog_dbg |
Where target_ip and target_port are respectively the IP address of the board and the chosen TCP port, and prog_dbg, the program under test compile in debug mode (CFLAGS=-g). Remote Debugging with GDB If you are familiar with gdb and prefer to use the command […]
Linux Debugging: Listing Shared Libraries at Runtime
I had a library (a python plugin) that crashed and outputted the “very useful”: illegal instruction I tried pdb (the Python Debugger) to find the issue without success. So I tried to add some printf to this library but none were outputted at runtime. So I guessed the illegal instructions was generated by the shared libraries. Let’s see how many libraries we’ve got: ldd libbrowsernode.so | wc -l 125 Oh dear!… 125 libraries.. This is where panic sets in. Luckily, there is a simple way to list the dynamic libraries as they are loaded (and some more useful info). Simply set: export LD_DEBUG=files before running your program. This is extremely verbose, so I recommend you redirect the output to a file. This method allowed me to find undefined symbols during dynamic libraries load time with errors such as: opening file=/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-png.so [0]; direct_opencount=1 14121: 14121: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-png.so: error: symbol lookup error: undefined […]
Android Developers Conference 2012 (AnDevCon III) Schedule
The full schedule for AnDevCon III (14-17 May 2012) has finally been released with 42 different classes and several workshops. The sessions will be organized into five subject area: Developer Essentials: These technical classes and workshops are for all Android developers and cover all programming topics. Android Enterprise: These technical sessions cover topics specific to building and managing apps for employees, business customers and partners, such as back-end integration corporate data center communications, ERP or CRM systems. Android Business: These classes and workshops are for entrepreneurial developers who want to learn the most effective ways of distributing and selling Android apps, including how to maximize profit through the Android Market. Android Tablets and beyond: These classes and workshops are specific to commercial devices beyond smartphones, including tablets, Google TV, and other platforms. Embedded Android: These classes and workshops are for developers working close to the hardware, such as on custom […]
Embedded Linux Conference 2012 Schedule
The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2012) will take place on February 15 – 15, 2012 at Hotel Sofitel in San Francisco. ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting. February 15 10:30 – 11: 30 – Profiling and Performance Measurement Techniques Using Linux Kernel Tools by Govindraj Raja, Software Engineer at Texas Instruments and Partha S Basak, Technical Manager at Texas Instruments. With ever growing features and functionality of Linux kernel, one needs methods to trace and profile parts of Linux kernel for various reasons like performance analysis, debugging etc. This presentation aims at providing an insight into few of these tools and their salient features. Supporting use case data as captured on open source OMAP4 pandaboard is also provided. 14:00 – 15:00 – The Yocto Project Overview […]
Xibo Digital Signage in Raspberry Pi Emulator (Step 1)
Xibo (pronounced eX-E-bO) is an open source, multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage client/server solution written in Python and dotNET. If you are not familiar with Xibo you can visit http://xibo.org.uk/ or/and read my introduction XIBO: An Open Source Digital Signage Server/Client. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost board based on Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM1176 Core) that should be available for sale at the end of January / beginning of February at http://www.raspberrypi.com. There are two versions of the board: Model A: 128 MB RAM and no Ethernet Model B: 256 MB RAM with 10/100 Mbit Ethernet BCM 2835 also features a Videocore GPU supporting OpenGL and 1080p30 video decoding that makes it ideal for multimedia applications such as digital signage players. The board support both HDMI and composite video output. You should also be able to connect a LCD via the DSI interface. If we can make Xibo run […]
Bsquare Releases TestQuest 10 for Android and Windows Embedded
BSQUARE announced the availability of TestQuest 10, a new test automation technology suite that brings together key features of TestQuest Pro (automated test solution for embedded systems) and TestQuest CountDown (mobile devices and applications testing) and adds new functionality to create a new and powerful test automation solution, that aims at reducing test costs and complexity. Here are TestQuest 10 highlights: Reduces per test pass costs and complexity of test case development by integrating with popular tools Scalable automation enables test case reuse across multiple devices increasing execution accuracy Supports test execution on desktop prototypes, emulators and simulators enabling test execution to start before production hardware is available Supports testing for devices running on Android and Windows Embedded platforms Improved intelligent text recognition and language capabilities — up to 92% processing speed improvement TestQuest 10 is comprises of three components: Test Designer – Creates automated tests quickly for test case […]