How important is Linux?

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

Kevin,

My biggest concern for running a RTOS on the robot controller is the overhead and resources the RTOS will take. I wouldn't want to compromise the prossessing power just for the convienience of some available services in an RTOS.

What if we get a real computer based upon a PPC or x86 for 2009 (yes, maybe I'm dreaming). Are you saying you don't want an off-the-shelf OS and want to write your own code to run on bare metal? Or are you assuming we'll get another microcontroller-based setup?

-Kevin

[ebarker]

Moving from a microcontroller to a computer with an OS certainly has merit.

We just want to make sure that it doesn't take rocket science to interface to the hardware for those that have custom or unique sensors or controls.

If the OS had the i/o support and built in telemetry and safety stuff then things can get real straightforward is all you have to do is drop an app inside.

Ed

[Phalanx]

Being in the corporate business sector where you need to make the trade offs between "get the product out there yesterday" and the "do more with less" or "make it work on our existing systems without upgrading them" and the "Oh BTW the transaction has to be finished in 3 seconds or less" I find myself straddling the fence a little on the subject.

On one since of the fence:
Having a RTOS running on the RC with the necessary and appropriate drivers for various hardware and sensors using standardized API calls for accessing and using said hardware is very much like todays methods of application development and programming. Most of the complex underlying programming of error handling, interrupt handling and so forth are hidden from the developer and the developer really doesn't need to know or care about them.
It certainly does make code development easier and faster. The downside is you tend to get larger code with more overhead that functions less efficiently which in turn requires more RAM, bigger Hard Drives, faster CPU's to get the job done. While this is not always true, it is the case more often than not.


On the other side of the fence:
Not having a RTOS allows the developer to intimately learn the inner workings of the system and hardware they are using. It does take A LOT longer to program and develop applications, but you generally can write more efficient code that will need less hard drive space require less RAM, less CPU cycles. This side of the fence in my opinion provides the students the opportunity to gain a greater depth of knowledge and understanding of computing at both the hardware level and the software level.

So the key question in my mind is which side of fence will the students benefit the most from? In my personal opinion, not having a RTOS would serve well, but I'll be honest and say that my view is slanted for 2 reasons.
1) I was the taught program/develop code in that way myself.
2) Currently one of my professional roles is application and overall system performance across the corporate enterprise. And believe me, the less the programmer understands of the inner workings the tougher my job is.

Just food for thought.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Kevin Watson

What if we get a real computer based upon a PPC or x86 for 2009 (yes, maybe I'm dreaming). Are you saying you don't want an off-the-shelf OS and want to write your own code to run on bare metal? Or are you assuming we'll get another microcontroller-based setup?

-Kevin

I'd love an off-the-shelf OS with a powerful enough processor to deal with the overhead.

My dream would be a full industrial PC (PC 104 form factor???) that would allow teams to build expansion as needed. That said, I'm assuming that we'll get another microcontroller. And while there are microcontrollers capable of running modern a OS, most cannot handle the overhead, memory and interrupt requirements.