Embedded Linux User Interface for an Industrial Measuring Device

SENNET CONTROL is a startup company in Germany that is now 2 years on market. Main field of business are intelligent industrial measuring devices for compressed air industry. Now we are moving to more complex measuring devices that support also new features for industrial automization (“industry 4.0”). The project/idea is to use a Linux singleboard computer with 10” touch display, over a serial connection to visualize the data of an industrial measuring system and to make all settings and configuration (called graphical user interface, “GUI”). The industrial measuring system is an embedded system based on an XMEGA microcontroller. It is making all measuring tasks around the sensors, and has also a lot of inputs and outputs as analog outputs, relay outputs, serial outputs with modbus protocol, USB connection. It makes also data- and event logging on an internal SD memory card. The embedded system functions also stand-alone, without the Linux system. The Linux SBC system is not functional stand-alone, it always needs the embedded system to get the data that should be visualized. The Linux SBC system acts as a Communication master, and the embedded unit as a slave. As Linux SBC systems, the following 2 options are currently considered: • Forlinx OK335xS-II SBC + 10” 800x600 LCD w/ resistive single-point touch, 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8, 128MB RAM or as an more powerful alternative • Forlinx [login to view URL] SBC + 10” XXXXxYYYY LCD w/ capacitive multi-point touch, 1GHz ARM, 1GB RAMSD Needed Skills are: • C/C++ • QML • Qt framework • Bash scripting • (Embedded) Linux - scripting • (Embedded) Linux - custom distribution, should have a good understanding of how a Linux system is built from packages, how it boots up; kernel knowledge as a bonus • MODBUS / industrial comm protocol knowledge • Python as a bonus • Embedded C programming as a bonus • Web technologies (for the web pages interface) as a bonus Tasks overview: • getting data from the embedded device and storing/processing/displaying this data on the UI, via serial communication (SCP) • The other way around, for settings on the embedded systems, data from the UI to the embedded device, via SCP • Replace the Python implementation of SCP with a C++ implementation • Data and event log files decoding, interpreting, processing and displaying on the Linux system • Data and event logging - with database backend (e.g. SQLite) • Multi-language interface (structure already in place, very much is already available in Qt) • Web server (with QtWebApp) - already integrated into the project as a proof of concept • Bash scripts for actions on USB plug in • MODBUS implementation • Email and SMS alarms • ...and various minor tasks ... see the pdf attached where we made the definition The basic architecture and about 20% of the functionality is already final and working. There is a functional prototype. Based on this state the development should be continued. Time for development is about 3 months.