Got a customer request but no idea can it be done. So need your opinions on this. This might be a utterly stupid thing to ask but yet need some facts so can work out best solution.
Scenario,
My Customer is an OEM Manufacturer. They make an automated system with a embedded touch screen (Windows XPe) this system got a button panel with some LED indicators (apart from keyboard) and 7 USB Ports. These button panels and USB ports are checked before sending to QC process. Currently a USB thumb drive with standalone executable with all indicators and controls flags is inserted to one of the USBs and then will run the exe. This exe capture user inputs from button panel and indicate which button is pressed so that it can be verify as working. And from program user can set LED indicators to different states (flashing, steady and off) so they can be verified as well. Once this is done then USB thumb drive will be inserted to each port and will verify it recognise. But after each verify step it needs to safely remove the drive from task bar. Once each test is finish user required to fill up the sheet with all pass and fail states for the entire button panel, indicators and USB ports. This is a quite length process when its come to mass production.
Apart from this embedded system all other components which suppose to connect to one of above embedded systems are tested via a program which I make and records all test outputs as they are tested. This program installed and components are connected to a testing embedded system.
Requirement,
What customer asks, can my program test completed embedded system with our host system (testing embedded system, may be via USB to USB) Its more like Testing a PC from another PC. Any ideas ?
Additional Info.
Apart from USBs there is one Network Port.
Thanks for looking, Feel Free to ask any questions. Any opinion is appreciated.
I'm not an expert on this topic, but it seems like this would be problematic because USB is an assymetrical protocol. There are hosts and there are devices. Hosts make the requests, and devices fulfill the requests. The problem is that PCs are USB hosts, not USB devices, so you would have two hosts trying to get the guy on the other side to do what he wants. Testing with a USB thumb drive worked because the thumb drive is a device.
It sounds like the unit to be tested doesn't have an ethernet port, which is a shame, because that would be the easiest way to go. If it has a serial port you could do it that way, but that is both slow and a hassle.
Related
I want to create an application or modify USB in a way so that, upon insertion into any PC, I can get the information that PC was inserted.
eg. upon insertion, I can read PC name and make an API call with this as post data so I'm able to know that my USB was inserted in some PC. But this should happen right away as USB is read by the machine, so even if the user formats it thereafter, it should not matter.
If it was earlier windows, I could write autorun and that would work. But I want this detection mechanism for Windows 7 and above.
I have done some research on the topic but could not find any reliable content. Some articles were related to USB based hacking attacks by changing wiring (USB hardware, to harm the computer) or something like that. But I totally don't want to do that. Just the detection, that USB was used.
I'm rather unexperienced on the field of microcontrollers, I come from a Java background so the question might seem a bit noob but I didn't find much information on this.
So is it possible to debug an STM32F4 board via bluetooth (using eclipse or some othe IDE)? And if so could you send me some links that might help? We're building a robotic car controlled by a discovery board and debugging using an USB cable is not really an option if we don't want to disassemble the whole stuff every time something goes wrong. Hence this would really come in handy. So any help is appreciated
For doing this you would need to find a "Bluetooth Enabled" Debugger. I have never seen any and not sure whether there exists such thing or not.
I would suggest you one thing:
Assuming you have bluetooth connectivity between your board and your Machine,
Insert Debug strings: Send some strings from your board to your PC via Bluetooth. These strings will give you what's going on in Circuit.
For example, After Initialization, send "Init Completed" and like that. You can see these strings and see what's wrong.
I usually do this for my Wireless Device.
What you're wanting to do is really not practical; you're coming at this from way too high a level and trying to imagine the system as if it were running an operating system from the word go.
When you get the STM32 it as empty shell; you need to program it to do what you need to do and the only [sensible] way to get register-level debugging is to use a JTAG interface.
If, and this is a big if, you get it working reliably, but just want to give some debug information back while it is running, you could write a load of routines within the code to send out debugging messages when it enters certain parts of the program - and send it out over Bluetooth - but this is nothing like what you're used to single stepping through your Java code with Eclipse. If you want to do that kind of thing, you are going to have to put a little connector on that allows you to connect your JTAG or two-wire debugger cable to the processor. Even then, when you do that, you will be completely resetting your program and not simply single stepping through from where it went wrong.
You could insert a monitor program within your program to send out register values, program status etc over Bluetooth, but you still have to write the inital code and the only way to do this with out a ridiculous amount of trail and error is via your JTAG or two-wire interface.
Would this product work? It's a "IOGEAR Bluetooth Serial Adapter, GBC232A" for connecting to a serial port over bluetooth. I'm interested in wireless debugging too because my surface-clone dev computer only has one usb and this seems like it could be convenient over a tangle of usb cords and a usb hub. I have zero experience with any of this, so maybe you could validate or invalidate it as an option. I figure it just needs a proper serial connector wired up on the board and power from on-board?
I'm in need of help. The situation is the following:
We have a software that runs on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It is deployed in around 15 cities on different devices (Motorola MC35, MC55, MC65, MC75, MC75A, ES400). It works perfectly fine everywhere except in one city. They have MC75A devices and every once in a while we get a helpdesk about our software disappearing from the device.
The most interesting part is when we log in to check the device, all we can see is a damaged/corrupted file system and the OS, which is set back to default.
We tried to reconstruct the problem here at our company, but we find it impossible. I'm wondering if anyone has ever bumped into this.
I'm gonna attach two images of the corrupted file system.
We use custom windows settings and AppCenter to protect the operating system from our customers. (They shouldn't be able to modify any settings on their own).
In general such corruption happens when the driver is interupted saving changes to the file system.
That can happen, for example, when a high priority thread consumes all cpu times.
It may also happen, when the device is hard reset, for example by taking the battery out during thed river is writing to the file system.
A low battery normally cannot result in that corruption:
a) as the device shuts down itslef with critcal battery power
and
b) the file system is in flash RAM (in contrast to Windows Mobile 2003 and before) and does not need battery power to hold data.
It is also possible that there is a bad behaving process doing these corruptions.
As you say you see this only in one city: What is the main difference with the devices there?
Are others also using the same device? Maybe the device series itslef or there firmware is faulty (contact symbol/motorola for new firmware or patches to the 'disk' driver)
Are the users in that area doing special things to the devices that others do not? For example remove the battery when they mean the device does not react?
Is the MC75A used in other areas and there it does not show the corruption?
You see, you have some more items to examine a rule for the corruption?
We have an auto update for our software that is installed via USB key (with the auto run). If I wanted to ensure that only authorized USB Keys were used, what's the best way?
Our installer is already signed, and it won't run otherwise. But I'm more wanting to inspect the USB Key for a signed installer, and if it's not there, just ignore, or even "Eject" the USB device.
And I should be able to tell the difference (in code) between a usb storage device, and say a camera, or keyboard.
I'm only wanting to disable non-authorized storage devices.
Thank you for your ideas.
non-authorized storage devices? This depends on how secure you want it to be. For the most secure level, it would consist of:
special firmware written to the flash drive to get extra "meta info" (read: expensive custom manufacturing of flash drives)
special windows driver to read that meta info from the flash drive
your program talking to that device driver to confirm it's authorized.
Or to the least secure level you have these options:
using a hidden file and a special key(possibly hashed time of last filesystem modification or something?) (dd breakable)
dropping below the filesystem level and recreating your own very simple filesystem.. (more security through obscurity though and dd could break that)
Also, for the "most secure" option, you really need a more secure way of running the program than auto-run and a device driver(which could be half-baked to make anything appear authorized). Why do you want it to only update from an authorized flash drive anyway?
You might be able to read the USB drive's serial number (assuming you get USB drives that have serial numbers; not all do). Then your application could call home to get the latest list of authorized serial numbers, and check to see if there is a match.
Earlz response is good, though I don't think you'd need custom manufacturing of flash drives... you would just need flash drives with some sort of unique firmware encrypted identifier. Perhaps something in the Kingston Data Traveler Line might do the trick. (I've never actually used one of these encrypted usb sticks, so I'm a bit foggy on the actual implementation details).
I am trying to make U9 telit modem send SMS messages. I think I handle protocol correctly, at least, I manage to send them, but only under these circumstances: the native application was executed beforehand, and killed by task manager (without giving it a chance to initialize things).
It looks like the supplied application is good at doing certain initialization/deinitialization which is critical. I also see the difference between the two states in output of AT+CIND command. When I am trying to do things on my own, it returns zeroes (including signal quality), but when I run the same command after killing the native application, the output looks reasonable.
I am out nearly of ideas. I have tried many things, including attempts to spy at modem's COM ports (didn't work). Haven't tried setting windows hooks to see what the application is trying to get thru.
Perhaps you have encountered a similar situation?
Agg's "Advanced Serial Port Monitor" actually helped a lot. Sometimes it caused blue screen, but it helped uncover secret commands which seem to help. AT+PCFULL is not described anywhere on the net, for example. The real trigger of non-operatio was AT+CFUN, the power disable/standby feature.
Also, it appeared that we have more issues. At first, the modem appears on the bus only as disk drive. It doesn't want to appear as any other devices before the drivers are installed. So, the U9 Telit software sends an IOCTL to disk driver to tell the modem to reappear as more devices (modem, 3 serial ports, another disk drive).