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Published byMaryann McBride Modified over 9 years ago
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Ed Langley
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Me ● Finished CRTS degree here at UWE in 2006 ● Went to Heber for placement year ● Used board from Heber for final year seven months project ● Returned to Heber after finishing at UWE Should have taken more than a weekends break!
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Heber ● Based in Stroud, Gloucestershire ● Design and manufacture electronic control systems Manufacture meaning: buying the parts, inspection, kitting and testing the final boards PCB fabrication and board assembly is subcontracted Design includes both hardware, software and FPGAs ● 40 Employees, 10 Engineers
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Heber
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Heber Products: Pluto ● Embedded control board range Cheaper (Than PC motherboards) Based on Motorola (Now Freescale) micro controllers ● Pluto 5: 68340 ● Pluto 6: ColdFire 5206e ● Pluto 7: ColdFire 5271 ● Pluto 8: ColdFire 5475
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Heber Products: Pluto 6
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Heber Products: Axis ● X86 motherboard range More powerful More programmers available More expensive Less interesting for us ● Windows XP Embedded ● Intel 945 chip set and Celeron M440 Various motherboards to get dual video on board and PCI express options
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Heber Products: old Axis
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Heber Products: Xline ● USB peripheral boards ● Cypress EZ-USB FX2 ● Device drivers Windows.sys Linux.ko Driver to load firmware, then another for sending commands to the board ● API DLL and.so ● IO, reel control, security (Encryption and power down monitoring) RNG, RTC, SRAM
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Heber Products: X10i
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What do I do there? ● Embedded software engineer ● Main projects since returning: Pluto 7 X20 Pluto 8 Linux port XPE XSpin
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Project: Pluto 7 ● First project when returning back to Heber ● Worked on a few drivers which weren't working Software SPI for a SEC meter
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Project: Pluto 7 ● ATA/FAT 32 drivers Written in house long ago from scratch Improved so more than one drive/FS is supported ● QSPI controller driver To talk to an SPI EEPROM ● Demonstration project/test harness
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Project Politics ● Technology wasn't big enough leap to justify further spending Production requires test fixtures for HP Marketing costs ● Claims that it wouldn't sell Differing opinions ● Many subtle grades of project abandonment Pluto 7: stopped Rumours and mumblings about perhaps unstopping Gaming markets change, new requirements arise
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Next project: X20 test software ● Test suite/harness Quite a common activity in software jobs ● X20 was a USB peripheral board with: Coldfire MCU (Same as Pluto 7) PIC (RTC, security switches during power off) IO SPI SRAM 7 serial ports Smartcard FPGA
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Project: X20 test software Application X20.dll X20.sys X20 board USB user space OS ftdi.sys USB Serial port system calls
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Project: X20 test software ● Used the opportunity to try out WxWidgets ● GUI and command line versions for Linux and Windows ● FTDI USB->RS232 chips on X20 Used drivers in the OS Different system calls needed for Windows and Linux ● Quirks added delays and never worked reliably
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Project: X20 test software
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More project politics ● X20 Board specification expanded at the request of one customer ● Became too expensive ● They didn't want to buy any ● Neither did anyone else ● X20: definitely canned
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Next project: Pluto 8 ● New embedded control board ● Freescale ColdFire 5475 MCU MMU Ethernet controller Linux BSP from Freescale ● Fujitsu Carmine graphics Promise of OpenGL | ES driver provision ● USB host controller ● Big Xilinx FPGA with flash inside
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Project: Pluto 8
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Smartcard development
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Smartcard development: Basic Command &H80 &H0a ZeroCounters( SessionId As Long ) ' if the session ID is not correct get out-a-here If SessionId <> SecSessionId Then SW1SW2 = errSessionIdBad Exit End If If GetKeyNumber() = AdminEncrypted Then ' Update the success counter AuthFpgaSuccessShdw = 0 UpdateFpgaSuccess = 1 AuthFpgaSuccess = AuthFpgaSuccessShdw UpdateFpgaSuccess = 0 ' Update failure counter AuthFpgaFailureShdw = 0 UpdateFpgaFailure = 1 AuthFpgaFailure = AuthFpgaFailureShdw UpdateFpgaFailure = 0 Else SW1SW2 = errGeneralFailure End If End Command
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Project: Pluto 8 ● Linux on Pluto 8 Started with the Carmine PCI evaluation card, connected to the 5475 evaluation board ● Got a basic kernel frame buffer driver working ● Should have checked OpenGL driver availability ● Established basic feasibility of the embedded Linux system Real Pluto 8 boards arrived ● Convinced bosses not to contract out all the porting work and driver development ● By going ahead and doing it
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Pluto 8 Linux ● Colilo port ● Built Fujitsu drivers for our board ● SDL port ● Subcontracted ALSA driver to MPC Data ● Tried to introduce SVN usage
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More cancellation ● A new x86 product was planned Intel Atom chipset motherboard with X10i joined on to it ● Would match the price of Pluto 8 and run Linux with better performance ● Pluto 8 Linux: shelved
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Endlessly ongoing project: Microsoft Windows XP Embedded ● Warning ● Don't use it ● It's Rubbish
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Endlessly ongoing project: Microsoft Windows XP Embedded
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Bad times ● Gaming market has peaks and troughs ● Heber entered a long, deep trough 3 months with low profits ● Redundancy scheme announced 2 weeks wondering who will go Polishing up CV ● When is time right to move on?
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Recent Project: Xspin with LEDs ● Xspin is a USB board for spinning up to 8 reels ● Had 1 month to add software PWM control 44 LED outputs ● 16 brightness levels Limit to 5 reels to provide enough spare outputs ● Create wiring loom and glue LEDs in place of reel lamps ● Then had to make it do fancy patterns Time pressure to show to customer Ended up with longer to improve it Going to show in Las Vegas this week
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Xspin with LEDs
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Xspin with LEDs: video!
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Lessons learned so far ● When business case for project disappears, end project sooner not later Not that it matters because I'm not in charge ● Redundancy isn't personal
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Lessons learned so far ● Small vs big company Small ● Less strict regarding design procedures ● Closer to customer ● Shorter projects, better feedback Big ● Can end up on long projects ● Better training No difference in job security
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