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| Building an Embedded Operating System using Windows XP Embedded (Page 3) |
Building an Embedded Operating System using Windows XP Embedded
 07-30-2009 09:18 PM
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| Difficulty: | Low | |||||
| Estimated Time: | 8 hours, including the installation and configuration of the build tools. | |||||
| Skills Required: | A basic understanding of Windows XP. | |||||
| Parts Required: | A Windows compatible Computer system that can boot from a USB drive. A USB flash disk 512 MB or larger. |
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| Tools Required: | The Windows Embedded Toolset | |||||
Advanced Functionality
Advanced Features:
The following features are advanced topics within Windows XP Embedded that are beyond the scope of this introductory tutorial. They are listed here to highlight the other features included in XP Embedded that may be useful for robotics. If there is interest, I can expand upon them in future tutorials:
HORM is an interesting variant of the embedded write filter. Instead of booting up into a clean state and erasingany changes that were made to the OS disk at a reboot, HORM boots the computer directly into an active state just as if you were returning from a hibernation. It does this by storing the system's hibernation file and protecting it with the EWF. This means that your computer will always boot into the same immediately usable state. Whatever programs were running when the system went into hibernation will still be running at the exact same state upon each reboot.
The OS built in this tutorial has a simplified version of the normal Windows Explorer interface. If you don't want to expose the Windows interface, it is possible to replace the Explorer shell with a program of your own devising. This custom shell would be the only means of interacting with the system.
Most robots won't have a monitor directly attached to them. The headless option makes it possible to omit the system files required to attach a monitor, mouse and keyboard. This is useful for completely autonomous systems or systems that only need to communicate over a network.
Booting from CD could be useful for stationary robots.Suggested uses: The following suggestions highlight situations where XP Embedded can offer a simple integration solution:
Create a small footprint OS that contains .NET and boots off of a USB memory stick to enable a mobile robot without a moving hard drive that can be programmed with any .NET language.
Simple integration of networking technologies through Windows binaries.
Create a non-persistent USB booting XPe OS image that incorporates Wi-Fi and an iSCSI initiator. Have the robot connect to an iSCSI target across a network so that your robot can have a small, local, non-persistent OS boot disk on USB and large persistent data storage available through iSCSI for data logging, video storage, etc. You could also store the robot's AI on the iSCSI target to simplify the software upgrade process.
Create a USB booting XPe OS image that incorporates Wi-Fi and has Remote Desktop enabled. This will allow you to log into your robot through Ethernet and control the robot as if you had a local keyboard and mouse connected to it.
Create a small footprint OS with bluetooth functionality enabled and use a wii-mote to control the robots actions.
Use standard USB plug n play webcams just as you would on a desktop computer.
The *.SDI file format allows the creation of a virtual disk. Computers with PXE boot capabilities can be booted across a network from an SDI file that contains an OS image, removing the need for local boot media. The OS is loaded directly into system RAM, so more memory is required for this sort of implementation.
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| Tags: | Windows XP Embedded Operating System USB Boot | |||||
| Replies to Tutorial: Building an Embedded Operating System using Windows XP Embedded |
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#1
08-01-2009
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Re: Building an Embedded Operating System using Windows XP Embedded
Ah, this brings back memories. I used Windows NT and then XP embedded extensively at work between 2000 and 2005. The embedded tools were always a real pain to deal with, and I thought the user interfaces were clumsy, non-intuitive and poorly designed. It would also often take quite a while to build a system, and build failures were common. In 2004 it took me about a week of solid effort to build an XP embedded system to fit onto a 1GB flash disk. I also completely hacked NT4 embedded to remove everything which wasn't needed (including Internet Explorer) and got it onto a 128MB Flash disk (the largest size available in 2000/2001). I don't know if things have changed, but the windows embedded tools used to be really expensive - over £1000 - but for work purposes the cost of software was negligible compared to the total cost of the industrial robot.
These days I'd probably use a small linux distro to do the same job, such as Puppy or Tiny Core, or just bolt a netbook onto the robot. |
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