June 2016 – embeddedTS Blog

Develop a Simple Qt Quick Interface for HMI/SCADA Applications

Introduction

We’re graduating from our Getting Started with Qt Creator on the TS-TPC-8390-4900 guide, where we ran an example program which came preloaded with Qt Creator on our TS-TPC-8390-4900, and moving into a more real world situation. This guide builds upon the foundations that we set up in the getting started guide and will walk you through building a simple human machine interface (HMI) for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) applications. We’ll be controlling a register connected to a red LED as well as reading a temperature sensor connected to our CPU. This is about as basic as you can get to demonstrate both system control and data acquisition, and it’s not far from a basic real world use case. In the real world, you’d be toggling DIO or relays instead of toggling an LED. As an end user of the touch panel computer (TPC), you’d be transferring control signals or other data via RS-232 or Ethernet with the press of a button. Once you complete this tutorial it’s a small jump to toggle DIO and relays to control a remote system.

For this guide, a project file containing TS-TPC-8390-4900 specific code written in C++ called “HeatLaser” will be provided for you. It reads CPU temperature every second and toggles the red LED. You’ll simply download it and open the project within Qt Creator. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to run and have a basic understanding of a Qt Quick Controls application. When you’re comfortable, you can make some edits to the project file to implement other similar tasks that may be more relevant to your needs.

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Reading CPU Temperature and Controlling LED with C++ via sysfs

Let’s take a quick look at an example C++ program which reads CPU temperature and controls an LED using sysfs. This example is a bit specific in that it’s only been tested on our NXP i.MX6 powered TS-4900 or TS-7970 running Yocto Linux, but the principles could be applied to other embedded systems as well. If you’re interested in the nitty gritty details about sysfs, take a look at The sysfs Filesystem by Patrick Mochel. Suffice it to say for our purposes, sysfs makes it easy for us to interact with system hardware using plain text files located in the /sys/ directory. The file to control the red LED is /sys/class/leds/red-led/brightness. The file to read the CPU temperature is /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp. If we want to turn the red LED on, we simply write a ‘1’ to the file, and not surprisingly, writing a ‘0’ will turn it off. If you’ve booted up your TS-4900 or TS-7970, you can see this by running the shell commands: Home

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Getting Started with Qt Creator on the TS-TPC-8390-4900 or TS-TPC-7990

Introduction

In this getting started guide, we’re going to look at what it takes to get an example Qt Creator project running on the TS-TPC-8390-4900 or TS-TPC-7990. This will help pave the way for developing a human machine interface (HMI) for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). We’ll start out by talking about the expected workflow and specific versions compatible with our chosen hardware, TS-TPC-8390-4900 or TS-TPC-7990. Next the TS-TPC-8390-4900 and Qt Creator will need to be prepared to work together. Finally, we’ll test our environment by running an example Qt Quick Controls Application. In a follow up guide, titled Develop a Simple Qt Quick Interface for HMI/SCADA Applications, we’ll look into what it takes to gather some system data and control DIO. Home

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Who’s (Not) Afraid of the Dark?

The Dark Side

Weather is inevitable, downtime shouldn’t be. Per Information Week, in 2015 IT downtime alone costs $26.5 Billion in lost revenue. This does not take into account the loss of customer confidence, productivity, and supply chain interruptions that are a result of these outages. In a constantly wired world, service level agreements (SLAs) with online availability requirements of >99.9% is today’s de-facto standard. It is simply a fact of the new business model that downtime is no longer acceptable. Industry has done what it can to protect itself from these outages as much as possible, and a few of those options are laid out below. But the result is the same, enterprise level businesses can no longer operate without disaster recovery plan with as many contingencies in place as possible to ensure minimal rebound and recovery time should an outage occur. With embedded electronics permeating further into our everyday lives, partially in thanks to the Internet of Things (IOT), there are more and more devices that we need to worry about recovering once the lights come back on. So what can you do to fend off the darkness?

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Reliable, Highly Engineered In-Vehicle Data Logging and Tracking TS-7670 and TS-7680

Highly Engineered Technologic Systems Products: Home

Engineered to withstand the toughest of environments, the TS-7670 or TS-7680 single board computers (SBCs) have no moving parts or fans and can reliably operate in temperatures from -40 °C to 85 °C and high-vibration environments.

The TS-7670 or TS-7680 boot to a preloaded Linux OS from either on-board flash or microSD card, both featuring data reliability insurances. The TS-7670 and TS-7680 use eMMC SLC flash technology for highly reliable data storage, and the microSD cards use our DoubleStore technology for a RAID-like solution.

Furthermore, on the TS-7680 only, an onboard backup power source, called TS-SILO, provides twenty to sixty seconds of reserve power to allow for a graceful shutdown in case of a sudden power outage or brownout.

Because of the inherent challenges with a mobile solution the challenge is collecting and sharing data reliably. This necessitates addressing file system and data corruption, transfer of the data, and operation at extreme temperatures.

File System and Data Integrity.

The challenges include additional power supply considerations for a vehicle that is always starting and stopping. When power is unexpectedly cut off from the embedded data logger, there is a high likelihood of filesystem and data corruption.

Data Transfer

Another consideration, is how to transfer the data once you’ve captured it via CAN or GPS. Thankfully, cellular network providers have done a great job at providing an always-available, nationwide service accessible from nearly anywhere. It would make sense to tap into this network using a cellular modem. Then, perhaps when the vehicle returns to a base station, WiFi or Bluetooth connections can be used to share auxiliary, non-real time data.

Operating at Extreme Temperature Ranges

Lastly, you’ll want to consider operating temperature ranges, as the inside a vehicle can easily reach 130 °F to 170 °F (54 °C to 76 °C) and on the opposite, reach “Ice Road Truckers” cold to -50 °F (-45 °C). It’s important to keep these considerations of power, temperature, and connectivity in mind in order to keep all this data safe and sound. The TS-7670 and TS-7680 single board computers are embedded systems which aim to provide reliable, low power, industrial-grade vehicle asset tracking solutions and solve these challenges.

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Practical Guide to Getting Started with the TS-TPC-8390-4900

Introduction

This guide will walk you through the basic steps of getting your TS-TPC-8390-4900 touch panel computer (TPC) up and running. It’s mostly an extrapolation from the official TS-TPC-8390-4900 Manual, but provides a more practical approach in setting up common connections, networking, and environments to begin development. We’ll assume you’ve already gone through the excitement of unboxing, and we’ll pick up from there.

Connections

Let’s get our TS-TPC-8390-4900 hooked up! This includes our very basic connections we’ll need for most any development or project: power, serial console, Ethernet, and optionally a keyboard and mouse.

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