real time w/ hardware

bkelly

Hello All,

I want to write some real time code, and if possible, on a hard real time system. This is a home project and a commercial RTOS is out of the question. I am thinking of assembling a PC-104 stack and some version of Linux, but am open to options. The target will run the real time code only. I would like to develop on my Windows 7 system and download to the real time computer. If necessary I will allocate a computer to the real time development system and run some version of Linux on it. (I would rather have two computers than mess with dual boot.)

I have no CPU preference. I want to concentrate on writing the software rather than developing the support system. I have a simple game in mind (a hardware device, not user interaction on a CRT), and want to do some work with accelerometers and gyroscopes.

What hardware and software combination do you recommend?

Thank you

woboyle

I do exactly this with a PC-104 ARM board w/ I/O and relay modules from Technologic Systems (www.embeddedarm.com). They provide a full Linux stack, tool chain, and decent documentation so you can get your board up and running in a couple of days on the outside. I do my kernel level development on my Linux workstation and/or laptop and application development on the board. It will boot Debian Etch in about 1.5 seconds from an SD card. Mounting an NFS share on my development system and rooting that increases the total boot time to about 4 seconds... :-) In case you are interested, I used this board and my laptop when I gave a paper at an IEEE meeting in the Chicago area last year on developing real-time Linux embedded system software. As part of the presentation, we made some kernel configuration modifications to include a new driver, and then built, installed, booted, and tested the new kernel and driver in less than 15 minutes!

FWIW, I use these boards to develop embedded controls for manufacturing and distribution systems.