Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with embedded

Embedded x86 Linux

thewalrus — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:27:04 -0800

x86 embedded Linux filter: Please recommend a not-too-costly embedded x86 system that is fanless, has a full set of the usual external I/O ports and doesn't use a lot of power. Should be the size of a VHS tape or smaller. Probably Mini-ITX form factor or nano-ITX. Relatively low cost would be good. I'm looking for suggestions for a embedded x86 system to integrate into a product that will be produced in relatively low volumes, for a niche market. It should be relatively easy to make changes to and diagnose in the field so it needs to have a full set of ports, at least two USB (preferably four USB), VGA, one RS232, RJ45 ethernet. Having a minipci slot for a 802.11g card would be good too.

CPU power is not a factor so it can be the lowest power VIA or Intel Atom processor, but it needs to be fanless.

It may need to store a bit of data so it should have a mounting point for one 2.5" SATA SSD.

This will probably be in the mini-ITX form factor or one of VIA's nano-ITX type boards. I'm looking to buy the motherboard, case and power supply together as a package, and the power supply needs to accept 12V DC input. Any suggestions on vendors or sources?

Would an embedded internal wireless 3G modem draw significantly less power from a laptop battery than an external USB wireless 3G modem?

gttommy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:05:27 -0800

Would an embedded internal wireless 3G modem draw significantly less power from a laptop battery than an external USB wireless 3G modem? Generally I would assume, an integrated device will draw less power, but these wireless modems just use up a lot of power regardless so the difference may be negligible.

However, some actual facts or links would be useful.

Thanks!

I'm looking for a tiny video camera to use with a robotics project

gentle — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:31:17 -0800

I'm looking for a tiny video camera to use with a robotics project. The camera needs to be digital, have a digital connection (preferably USB, not wireless), support a minimum resolution of 1024x768 at 30fps and weigh as little as possible — maybe as much as 120g but hopefully lighter. And it must be affordable: less than $500 including lens. I have looked at consumer web cams, but I have not found any that match my requirements (web cams are typically low resolution/low frame rate); also they are all in enclosures so I would need to pry them open. And they are not that light-weight.

I have looked at various RC sites, but they tend to do analog cameras or ones that record to an SD card; I want a live feed to my microcontroller.

I found a company called OEM Cameras that have several digital ones for sale, but the model that I would prefer (which has a standard CS mount) is an incredible $800, and that's without a lens!

How can I change the embedded device name of a USB stick?

complience — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:03:56 -0800

How can I change the embedded device name of a USB stick? I'm trying to make the usb device look like another usb device -
The symantic antivirus preloaded on my machine only allows USBs of a certain type to be opened by windows.

so i want to change the device name of a USB so it looks like the allowed USB type.

When I run a lsusb on my linux box i get the following back

Bus 001 Device 020: ID 04f2:b119 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd

I want to rename it too the ID details shown below

Bus 001 Device 021: ID 08ec:204a M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers TravelDrive

Is this possible?

Books on C

gkhewitt — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:09:39 -0800

What books would you recommend for embedded C programming? I'm involved in new group project (University) that will eventually evolve into an autonomous path-finding robot. FYI, it will probably use a PIC32 processor.

I have a background in programming, and a good (practical) understanding of Java and C# having used them a lot over the last four years. However, pure C is not my strongest point, and I'm needing a good brush-up! I've done a bit as part of a module a while back, but certainly not enough to dive into detailed algorithms.

What good books (or online resources) would you recommend to someone who has a reasonable set of experience with programming in general but needs a bit more to read on pure C?

Security training for embedded developers?

RobotVoodooPower — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:04:35 -0800

What's a good security course for embedded developers? The folks at the top say we need "security training". The server guys are taking a course in SQL injection, ASP.NET stuff, etc. I'd rather get my embedded guys something more, well, embedded-specific. I'm thinking a refresher on basics of cryptography, network security, specific protocols, etc. and maybe some "code practices greatest hits". A short two-day course is the target. Does anyone have a recommendation for either online/onsite training that might fit the bill?

How to serve HTML out of a compressed archive?

Galvatron — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 09:41:31 -0800

I want to serve lots of different static HTML files out of a single compressed archive, to save disk space on the server. Is there a quick and easy solution for this? So I got an iPod Touch recently, and could not restrain myself from running the jailbreak on it. There are some nifty third party apps out there, but I'm pretty sure the killer app for me is being able to browse a Wikipedia snapshot without requiring wifi.

Due to the disk space limitations, I'd like to serve the snapshot out of a compressed archive. Compressing each html file individually would work, but it's relatively storage-inefficient, so I'd rather have everything wrapped up in a big gzipped tarball or similar.

Is there an Apache or lighthttpd module that would make this project easy? Or is embedded OS X capable of mounting an archive through a VFS/loopback device? The fallback solution is that I write a cgi script to do the decompression, but I'm looking for something better.

Finding a new programming job when my actual experience is limited/narrow.

leakymem — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:53:30 -0800

I need a new job, but I'm not sure what potential employers will make of my qualifications. While I have a technology related degree (Electronic Engineering), I am looking for a software job. I think that my lack of a software degree combined with the fact that I currently work in a pretty narrow field of software development may hamper my chances of of getting a job in another area of programming and so I need advice on improving how I look on paper. I've spent the last 2 to 3 years doing real time embedded Linux kernel programming for a tech startup. I've only ever worked for startups, and as such have often gotten my foot in the door through a combination of connections and reputation. While I was in college, I worked part time for another embedded startup for a year, so in terms of C, I'm quite solid, but that's not necessarily what I want to do going forward. Any programming job, other than web development, would do me just fine.

On top of the day job, I've done some casual contract programming over the years in C++, C#, Python and occasionally some LAMP type stuff. I'm a fast learner and fully believe I can turn my hand to any programming task I'm given, but convincing a potential employer of this may not be easy.

I've decided not to leave my job until the new year, probably February, which gives me time to maybe build up some sort of portfolio of work to prove my abilities, but I don't really know where to start. So what should I do to make myself look better on paper? Particularly to a non-startup - I'm a tad burned out from the mis-management that seems inherent in < 10 man companies.

photo tagging software?

Popcorn — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:45:33 -0800

What is a good program (preferably free) that I can use to embed tags in my photo collection? I'd like to tag my photos in an embedded fashion so that I can organize them without messing with the existing folder structure. (Although it would be nice to be able to alter the dir structure based on the tags if need be). I'd like to tag them in some widely used scheme that is portable, kinda like ID3 on mp3's.

The picasa interface seems ideal to me but it seems that you can only use one tag per photo and the tags are not embedded.

Is there any thing like this out there that meets the requirements?

Vault for embedded linux system development?

gte910h — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:47:49 -0800

Does anyone successfully use Vault to do embedded linux development (including maintaining root file system permissions, check in from the development platform and the target as well)? We're a small firm that has a Vault repository going back several years. We've recently come under the need to Linux work as well to accommodate the needs of our customers. Linux and Vault aren't immediately hospitable to each other.

We have the mono client working on one of our dev machines for one platform.

We are not sure we can afford to do that on every platform that we need to be able to develop on, but we do need working source control on every platform. Mono is a pretty big dependency (from a configuration/install angle, to a runtime requirement) for us to repeatedly meet it.

We're trying to see if we have to go for a two source control system, or we can successfully use vault to check-in useful and frequent versions for our Linux development.

Here are our requirements that we know of:

Source Control Client can work on or with a variety of Linux systems (including some embedded targets)
Source Control Solution will not fiddle with rwx permission bits or ownership (important for developing and maintaining root filesystems)
Can check in/out files with a minimum of hassle and can use comments
Can be used with a variety of versions of linux (all 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, basically)
Can be used in a directory structure that isn't necessarily wholly owned by vault
Can easily add files from the command line and not have to fiddle with lots of settings per files
Can easily revert from the Linux client
Can view check-in comments from the Linux client
Can easily diff (possibly using a separate windows client).
Will not fiddle with the end of line characters in the file
Will handle the end of line character in the diffs

Can vault do this? Is there some mix of NFS/NIS/webDAV/smb that can allow it to do all of the above via the windows client without trouncing the file permissions? Does anyone have a setup for this?

Also, if anyone has two system repositories that handle this, featuring Vault on the windows side, I'd also like to hear both details and reasons why you went that way.

--Michael Langford

How do I include a link to driving directions in an embedded Google Map?

designbot — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:55:08 -0800

What is the best way to embed a Google Map of a business's location, including a link to driving directions? This is for a small business's website. All I want is a small embedded map of the business's location, with a standard pop-up flag including links for driving directions, the address, etc. (Basically like what you see here, but without the extra search results on the left-hand side.

If there's a better input method for requesting driving directions, that would be fine too.

I would think that providing a map & driving directions to a specific business would be one of the most common uses of the Google Maps API, but I don't see any examples of what I'm looking for. Surely, there must be a simple, standard way to provide driving directions on your website… Right?

Can I be my own YouTube?

spartacusroosevelt — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:51:11 -0800

I want to be my own YouTube/Google video. Is there an easy way to show videos on my own server embedded in a page? I am redoing a school's website, and they are a performing arts school and would love to have embedded video of events. Of course my first choice would be to use Google or Youtube or one of the dozen or so free services, but they are all blocked by the school's filter, so they couldn't be posted from there and wouldn't work when being browsed from the school. Is there a handy dandy "convert, upload and embed" way to do this, or is this a much more difficult process than I would hope? I am afraid I know the answer.

How to embed a blog without complicated coding...

richter_x — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:14:43 -0800

A way to embed a journal feed on a site (and allow commenting) without using Perl/CGI/Java/ASP/PHP? I want to start a blog. I need something I can embed in a page with simple HTML, can take comments, and doesn't require me to install CGI scripts/Perl/ASP, none of which I have enough skill to do. (tried with Movable Type, after 5 hours I wanted to toss my laptop out the window)

Is there something simple and functional that I can use without having to know an advanced computer language?

As an aside, I use LJ right now, but while I can embed into a page, I can't seem to get it to allow comments.

Apologies if something like this was posted, I searched and couldn't find anything definitive.

Is Windows Media Player causing popups?

Brian James — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:06:42 -0800

How do I stop popups that appear when Windows Media Player is running? I do not in general have a popup problem. The only time I get popups is when Windows Media Player is playing a feed off the web, or if it is playing an embedded video in a web page. I do not get popups at any other time. (I have Quicktime set up to play, in Firefox, almost all video streams it can; I only use Windows Media for wmv and so forth)

In the Security tab, I see a setting that may be relevant called "Do not run script commands and rich media streams if the player is running inside a web page" that is checked. Windows XP automatic updates is enabled and up-to-date.

I use Firefox 1.5.0.3, I scan for spyware/popups regularly with Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, and Ewido. Running version 10 of Windows Media.

embedded inside

rootz — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 08:44:29 -0800

Can I upgrade my embedded/C development skills with a project at home? My role in my organisation is to manage our hardware and embedded software suppliers. My hands-on experience in terms of OS and C development is restricted to college, 10 years ago - I've been developing in HLL's like VB and Javascript since then, which has not stood me in best stead for what I do at the moment. I want to re-familiarise myself at a more practical level with the complexities of embedded development - this isn't something that I have the chance to do on a day-to-day basis at work,so I've been thinking of doing a little bit of hobbying at home.

So, I'm not looking for a full-scale set-top box implementation project complete with hardware and chipset selection, cosmetics, RTOS, driver and middleware development - but I would like to do something that will get me hand-to-hand with some proper coding again, hopefully involving video and preferably in an embedded or linux environment, but I'm not picky. Any ideas?

Unembedding an image in PowerPoint

punkfloyd — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:30:36 -0800

Is there a way to isolate/extract a .jpg image that has been inserted in the background of a PowerPoint slide? It has not just been placed on the master. Instead somebody did the Format>Background>Fill effects>Picture thing which embeds the image. HELP! PowerPoint help needed

Newsletter from Outlook

Blue Buddha — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:08:51 -0800

How do I stop Outlook from embedding images into my newsletters? I'm using Outlook at work to send out a newsletters, and what I do is copy-paste from Frontpage. In Frontpage, I link the images to the server, but the end result is the images are embedded in the e-mail when it is sent. I want the reference to go to the server (to reduce e-mail size and avoid image attachments). Is there some way I can just enter the HTML code -- can this be done with Outlook and how?

I will not be crucified on a cross-compile of gold...

mzurer — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 18:55:53 -0800

I am having problems with crosstools on OS 10.3.9 - Does anyone have this setup working? Any general advice on crosscompiling on a Mac for ARM is also welcome. When I try to get crosstools going, during the stage where is it building glibc, it pukes out and tells me my versions of as and ld are out of date or missing. Poking around on the internet, and I see that the version of binutils distributed with XCode 1.5 (the most up-to-date available for 10.3) is not the latest and greatest, and this is causing some problems for other people. When I try to build the most recent versions from the gnu ftp site, I find that my platform doesn't seem to be supported.
Questions:
So what's up with that?
If I upgrade to OS 10.4 and XCode 2.1, are later versions of as and ld included?
I am not terribly tied to crosstools, but it will probably be used in the "standard" development tools for this project. What exactly would I need to have if I am not going to use crosstools? I think I need gcc, glibc, binutils, and some other stuff all targeted to building the ARM target on my Mac.
What exactly do I have wrong in my description above?