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| Linux porting services |
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e-con Systems has done Linux porting on to new ARM cores as well as on processors that didn't have any native core. This means writing a new entry.S file to make sure the port is done to the new architecture.
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| A few exciting cases for which our engineers have worked to get a complete solution |
1. Porting of Linux to a new ARM based silicon with no prior Linux port before.
2. Porting of Linux on a completely new core, where a previous port was not available.
3. Development of Linux BSP for platforms that are customized out of a reference design. These include platforms designed from processors like PXA270, PXA320, i.MX31 and i.Mx27.
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| The amount of study that has gone into the Linux kernel has given engineers at e-con complete understanding of the Linux architecture and source code. R&D efforts in the Linux kernel are a regular in the e-con activity list. |
| With this level of expertise, e-con Systems can definitely speed up the development time and thereby secures a special place in the embedded arena where "time to market" is the key difference between success and failure. |
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| Device driver development |
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| e-con Systems Embedded Linux team has experience in writing drivers for custom devices. e-con Systems in the past has worked on the device driver development in the following areas. |
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1. Framebuffer Driver for Video Graphics Controllers.
2. USB drivers - Devices sometimes need to support custom end point configuration and e-con has developed USB device drivers that support this.
3. Camera drivers - e-con has a dedicated team of Engineers working on the Linux camera driver development and supporting Video for Linux. e-con Systems has support for 1.3M pixel, 2M pixel and 3.2M pixel camera modules with drivers for Linux and support for Video for Linux too. Please refer www.e-consystems.com/camerasensor.asp for more information.
4. Touch screen – e-con has optimized Linux touch screen drivers on top of touch screen controllers like TSC2301, UCB1400 for platforms running embedded Linux. e-con has developed touch screen optimization modules on top of GUI like Qtopia 2.2.0 for various touch screen controllers.
5. Nand flash – e-con Systems has developed Linux NAND flash drivers and is currently developing open nand flash interface(ONFI) support in Linux. e-con supports OS boot from NAND flash too and hence support u-boot level bad block management too.
6. GPRS – e-con has developed support for GPRS in Linux. e-con Systems has developed a daughter card with SIM508 GPRS modem. Such daughter cards can be directly interfaced with any single board computer having RS232 interface. Dialer application such as wvdial is available on top of these GPRS modems. Please refer GPRS/GPS page for more information.
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| Rapid product development kit |
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e-con Systems has developed Linux based reference designs catering to multiple applications. The Marvell PXA270 based reference design namely Sirius, is e-con’s handheld reference design that runs Linux 2.6.25.
With Sirius, the customer can test any of the modern day consumer interfaces like GPRS, GPS, Thermal printer, bar code, magnetic card reader, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera and NAND flash. E-con has already built drivers for these peripherals and several customers in the past have used this kit to develop their drivers. Other than this e-con has expansion bus interfaces where customers can build daughter modules which can be application specific, Customers who have bought Sirius in the past have used it for proof of concept and then customized it for their final product.
For more information on the product please refer the link
www.e-consystems.com/sirius.asp. |
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| Computer on modules running Linux |
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e-con Systems has developed a Computer on module that run Linux. These computer on modules can have SDRAM up to 128MB and flash up to 32MB. Customers using these computer on modules can design carrier boards around these. Please refer www.e-consystems.com/esom270.asp for more information.
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| For more details of the Kernel, Filesystem and ApplicationFeatures on this System on module, please refer Linux BSP page. |
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| e-con has also developed Rapid develepment Kit (RDK) based on this computer on module. The RDK supports all the peripherals exposed by the PXA270 computer on Module along with the provision for adding exapnsion modules. |
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| Power management |
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| Customers today are in need of advanced mobile devices that needs to be battery powered for a long period of time. For an example, Smart phone these days have a requirement of 125-150 hours of non-usage time. To achieve this and also by not going in for high cost batteries it becomes important to have a very good power management policy. e-con has designed handheld point of sale systems that has Ethernet, Wi-Fi, GPRS, bar code scanner, thermal printer, LCD, touch screen, contactless smart card, magnetic card that run Linux. These point of sale terminals had a standby time of 125 hours and also 8-12 hours of complete running time. Power management generally takes place in three places |
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- During component selection – Processor should be able to run at 1V and also all the peripherals like SDRAM should be low powered one meaning should be operational at 1.8V. e-con has got very good experience in choosing the components and has successfully designed products on the same.
- Device driver development - In Linux, if the power management APIs for each device is handled in the device driver. To drive the device to sleep mode the device drivers are notified by the power management portion of the BSP.
- Power management policy – This is quite dynamic. The policy is more dependent on the application of the device. For example, if a user is watching Video and not touching the mobile device for 15 minutes then the device should not go to standby mode. To solve this problem, e-con proposes a policy where there will be different power management profiles based on what type of customer would use the product.
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| Linux Application development |
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| Embedded systems are becoming more and more sophiticated these days. Embedded systems are becoming replacements for PCs in entertainment and Personal assistance(e.g. set top boxes and PDA/Tablets).These necessities call for good GUI, word processing, etc. with more hardware constraints. e-con has responded to this call with the state-of-art application development. |
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| Some of the applications we added recently to our list are |
- MP3 Player for ARM
- E-Mail Client (optimised for ARM)
- FM Player
- TV Picture-In-Picture Application
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| e-con has skilled programmers in Qt and Qtopia who have developed a complete desktop environment for the set top box. |
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