TS-7558 Industrial Controller Box with Opto-Isolated I/O, PoE, and CAN

Software Description

The TS-7558 SBC boots to Linux 2.6.24 from either a microSD card or on-board XNAND drive. The 256MB on-board XNAND Drive is enough to store a bootable kernel image, initial ramdisk image, and a minimal version of Debian "Lenny" Linux. Storage memory can be expanded through the microSD card socket. A bootable microSD card must contain a Linux kernel image, a initial ramdisk image, and a valid Linux root filesystem. The fast Linux bootup solution was optimized for speed and includes kernel, initrd, and filesystem (Busybox) tweaks. Since this board boots to an initrd (initial ram disk) with a read-only mounted filesystem, it is possible to have something other than a shell prompt running after bootup by editing the /linuxrc shell script on the initrd. Additional TS-7558 software features include:

• Boots Linux 2.6.24 out-of-the-box in less than 3 seconds (to a shell prompt).
• MicroSD card pre-installed with minimal Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution.
• Un-brickable design ensures 100% recoverability from microSD card in case of on-board XNAND drive erasure.
• Startup Linux mini-root scripts allow flexible root and backup filesystem selection (microSD, NFS, USB flash) as well as software field upgrade support.

Data Acquisition

The TS-7558 ships with a full-featured, open source data acquisition driver utility called daqctl. This utility gives full control over a wide variety of TS-7558 hardware features including ADC, PWMs, quadrature, counters, and timestamped glitch detection. The FPGA can easily be programmed to interrupt the CPU under a wide variety of external conditions. A data acquisition network service is also supported, allowing for software control on a remote system.

Linux OS and Debian Support

Technologic Systems' TS-7558 ARM Single Board Computers (SBC) are compatible with a wide range of Operating Systems (OS's). The Linux choice is highly recommended and our products are totally integrated with the open-source vision. The boards ship with Linux 2.6.24 kernel running out-of-the-box. There is no proprietary source code in the kernel since all the hardware specific functionalities are handled by user-space utilities. The Linux kernel includes driver support for on-board hardware, enabling quick time to market of end-users applications. Examples and source codes are also available for downloading.

The compact initial ramdisk filesystem is based on Busybox and uClibc and is improved for performance and flexibility. Specific Linux scripts and utilities that handle the TS-7558 functions are included. In addition, the full Debian binaries and services are available from the initial ramdisk after mounting the microSD card.

The TS-7558 SBCs are configured to load Debian "Lenny" Linux from the on-board XNAND drive or microSD card during boot up time. The on-board XNAND drive uses a minimal Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution that has been compacted to fit in the 256MB space and leave about 70MB free for the user and includes utilities such as apt-get for installing and removing programs. The microSD card uses a full featured Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution which includes a complete GNU C/C++ embedded development environment. In addition, Apache Web Server, FTP, SSH, Telnet and Samba network services are available with C/PHP/Perl for embedded CGI development.

Eclipse IDE for TS-7000 and Windows

The Eclipse IDE configured for embedded development with the TS-7000 ARM9 computers running Debian Linux is provided on our FTP site. Technologic Systems makes use of the Eclipse Europa release and the DSDP+CDT plugins in order to provide an advanced IDE and makes embedded development easier. ARM crosstool chains, cygwin runtime-libraries and a Java Development Kit are included in the zip file, therefore Eclipse IDE will run out-of-the-box (no need for installation) in your Windows PC. The Eclipse environment is already configured to allow a quick startup with a TS-7000 embedded development. After start-up, the installed 'helloworld' example shows the user how to use the Eclipse functionalities, including cross-compilation, build-management configurations, binary download to the TS-7000 target, target management via SSH, FTP, telnet or serial console, client-server debugging with Eclipse debug view, etc.

CAN Bus Support in User Space

The TS-7558 utilizes an SJA1000C-compatible FPGA core out of the box complete with documentation and sample code. The sample code provides a simple utility to send/receive CAN packets and perform useful and common functions with the CAN bus from userspace. Additionally, this sample code includes network CAN service and can be automatically started on TS-7558 bootup which makes the writing of CAN enabled applications even simpler and furthermore allows for the possibility of development in languages other than C (Java, Python, etc..) and on systems other than the local Linux SBC (Linux/x86, Windows, etc..)