Author Archives: Gary Marks

Raspberry Pi SPI Command-line Utility 1.3.1 Available

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The Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity, spincl, has been updated. Ver­sion 1.3.1 is now avail­able. iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally released the Rasp­berry Pi SPI util­ity in Feb­ru­ary, 2013 licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3. This spincl update is cov­ered under the same license.

The fol­low­ing items are included in the update:

  • This ver­sion was built with the bcm2835-1.25 library. All pre­vi­ous ver­sions were built with bcm2835-17.
  • This ver­sion was tested on 2013-02-09 raspian wheezy. The 2012-10-28 raspian wheezy was used for all pre­vi­ous versions.

iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally cre­ated the Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form for the con­ve­nience of hard­ware debug and to indi­rectly add SPI func­tion­al­ity to script­ing lan­guages such as Bash and Python.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script. A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable. Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.

Check the orig­i­nal post for a full expla­na­tion of the Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity and to down­load the lat­est version.

Raspberry Pi SPI Command-line Utility Update

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The Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity, spincl, has been updated.  Ver­sion 1.3.0 is now avail­able.  iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally released the Rasp­berry Pi SPI util­ity in Feb­ru­ary, 2013, licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3.  This spincl update is cov­ered under the same license.

The fol­low­ing items are included in the update:

  • Bug Fix:  A bug in the way the num­ber of trans­mit bytes was cal­cu­lated has been fixed.  Pre­vi­ously, if the total byte length of the trans­fer was greater than the num­ber of spec­i­fied xmit bytes then an attempt to access command-line argu­ments beyond the num­ber avail­able would occur, which causes a seg­men­ta­tion fault.
  • suid bit is now set in the install tar­get of Makefile.

iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally cre­ated the Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form for the con­ve­nience of hard­ware debug and to indi­rectly add SPI func­tion­al­ity to script­ing lan­guages such as Bash and Python.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script.  A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable.  Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.

Check the orig­i­nal post for a full expla­na­tion of the Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity and to down­load the lat­est version.

 

Demand Response for California Agricultural Irrigation

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A paper by Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions, “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion: A Scop­ing Study” has just been pub­lished by the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC).

Link to the DRRC version

Con­tinue read­ing →

Frost Protection Collaboration with UC Davis

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Frost Protection Collaboration UC DavisiP Solu­tions is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Bio­me­te­o­rol­ogy and Atmos­pheric Sci­ence depart­ments of U.C. Davis on a frost pro­tec­tion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem.  A sys­tem pro­vided by iP Solu­tions has just been installed at the UC Davis Camp­bell test site.  Tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity data cor­rec­tion is cur­rently being conducted.

 

SPI Command-line Utility for Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry PiiP Solu­tions has cre­ated a Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form.  The util­ity, spincl, is licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3 and is being offered by iP Solu­tions as a free down­load with source included.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script.  A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable.  Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.   Con­tinue read­ing →

Raspberry Pi Weather Station

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Raspberry Pi Weather StationiP Solu­tions has cre­ated a Rasp­berry Pi weather station. The Rasp­berry Pi plat­form employs a Debian Wheezy Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion.  iP Solu­tions designed and fab­ri­cated an ana­log and dig­i­tal I/O board to inter­face the Rasp­berry Pi to tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity, baro­met­ric pres­sure and wind-speed sen­sors.  Addi­tion­ally, iP Solu­tions cre­ated a sep­a­rate pro­pri­etary tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity sen­sor module.

 

Embedded Linux DSP System for Chemical and Radiation Threat Detection

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C-Scout

iP Solu­tions brought exten­sive knowl­edge of Embed­ded Linux DSP sys­tems hard­ware and soft­ware to the Nevada Nan­otech Sys­tems (NNTS) project for explo­sive chem­i­cal and radi­a­tion threat detec­tion and  analy­sis. The project, CScout, was tar­geted for ship­ping con­tainer security.

Pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with com­plex embed­ded con­trol and data acqui­si­tion sys­tems enabled iP Solu­tions to imme­di­ately begin con­tribut­ing to this project.  The pri­mary goal was to design both hard­ware and soft­ware for using an NNTS Mol­e­c­u­lar Prop­er­ties Sen­sor (MPS) to col­lect, ana­lyze and present explo­sive chem­i­cal vapor threat data.  Addi­tion­ally, radi­a­tion spec­trum data was to be col­lected and ana­lyzed for any radi­a­tion threat com­po­nents.  This sys­tem was to be con­trolled and results com­mu­ni­cated remotely through a wire­less inter­face, the Mar­itime Asset Tag Track­ing Sys­tem (MATTS).  Also, a hard­wired net­work con­nec­tion was to enable more exten­sive main­te­nance and engi­neer­ing modes with web-based and ter­mi­nal based interfaces.

The CScout sys­tem was suc­cess­fully com­pleted with impres­sive mea­sure­ment results. This sys­tem will be used for demon­stra­tion of NNTS sen­sor capa­bil­i­ties to poten­tial cus­tomers. Con­tinue read­ing →

Emerging Technologies Summit Presentation

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Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions was invited to speak at the Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies Sum­mit in Pasadena, CA on Octo­ber 15th, 2012.  He pre­sented “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion” to the ses­sion titled “The Untapped Resource, Demand Response for the Indus­trial and Agri­cul­tural Mar­kets”.

The Power-point Presentation

Down­load (PPTX, 1.24MB)

 

Invitation to Join DRRC Industrial Controls Experts Group

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Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions cor­po­ra­tion has been invited to join the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC) Indus­trial Con­trols Experts Group.  On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2011 the group met to con­sult on a study, “Assess­ing the Con­trol Sys­tems Capac­ity for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Indus­tries”.

Link to Final Report at the DRRC