Zilogic Systems is proud to announce our participation as a Summit Associate at this year’s WiFi Knowledge Summit 2024 in Bangalore.

As a Summit Associate, we’re gearing up to dive deep into the latest trends, innovations, and best practices shaping the WiFi landscape. This summit serves as a …

LoRaWAN on the other hand, is a wireless communication protocol, built on top of LoRa physical layer and designed for long-range, low-power applications such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. LoRaWAN support 3 different operating modes: Class A, Class B, and Class C. ] The operating modes determines the communication behavior …

For an Linux based In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) platform, Client expected us reduce the 22 Sec boot-time of the HMI, and get the Rear View Camera to be coming up within 4 Sec and the HMI component to be up by 8 Sec.

Modern vehicles are equipped with complex infotainment systems that rely on Touch Screens for user interaction and control. Testing the functionality of these HIDs is crucial to ensure a seamless user experience. However, manual testing can be time-consuming, error-prone, and limited in test coverage.

The hardware platform was based on an ESP32 board. The ESP32 board queries the existing system through a SPI base command interface, and makes the data available over JSON-RPC interface. The mobile application runing on iPhone / Android mobile, queries the data periodically over the JSON-RPC interface, and displays it on …

The hardware platform was based on an ESP32 board. The ESP32 boardqueries the existing system through a SPI base command interface, andmakes the data available over JSON-RPC interface. The mobile application runing on iPhone / Android mobile, queries the data periodically over the JSON-RPC interface, and displays it on themobile application …

Human errors can be catastrophic in a diagnostics lab environment. One potential cause of human error, would be mis-labelling or improper labelling a blood sample collected from a patient. The Automated Blood Tube Labeler is a lab equipment designed to reduce the possibility of human errors, when collecting blood samples …

A board is based on the STM32F4 series microcontroller. The customer wanted a provision to update the application image through the Ethernet interface. The application image should be accepted by the board only if its from an authorized source, so that unauthorized update is prohibited.

This case-study involves, booting all the lab computers over the network, with a Linux kernel and a minimal root filesystem image, using PXE boot. This way each computer did not have to be individually setup. The Tiny Core Linux distribution was used to create a minimal filesystem image, containing the …

Kivy is a Python-based open-source library for writing GUI applications, for touch-screen based systems. Kivy supports both desktop environments and mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. In our previous article, we talked about porting Kivy to Yocto, on the Colibri T-20. In this article, we demonstrate what Kivy features …

Linux is the most popular operating system in embedded devices, it is being used in various products including hand-helds, medical and Industrial HMIs devices. When it comes to natural user interface, people tend to choose the Android framework, but Android, is too heavy for buiding just a HMI. A popular …

When working with Linux based embedded systems it is essential to cross compile applications to the required target architecture. It is necessary to understand how packages are built, and how the build can be customized to build applications for Linux based embedded systems. This article will be a starting point …

We are delighted to announce that Zilogic Systems has been certified as ISO 9001:2015 since Jan 2020!

Zilogic Systems has laid a strong emphasis on a process-oriented approach, to hardware and software development, ever since its inception. We have constantly looked for ways to improve our processes, and have …

Zilogic Systems is proud to participate in Connected Vehicle 2020 as a badge sponsor. CV2020 is the 5th international conference and exhibition on emerging technologies in connected, shared and autonomous in the automotive sector. Connected Vehicle conference provides a focused platform to discuss the trends in reshaping the automotive and …

We have moved in to a new facility at Raghula Tech Park, located on the Rajiv Gandhi IT Expressway. The new facility consolidates teams distributed across various locations under one roof. As an integrated setup, we hope this will accelerate execution and help serve our customers in a better way …

Self-paced hands-on tutorial on how programs interact with devices in an embedded system.

Zilogic Systems participated in PyCon India 2019 at the Chennai Trade Centre. PyCon India is the premier conference in India on using and developing python programming language. Zilogic System was the associate partner of this grand tech event. More details at https://in.pycon.org/2019/

Some pictures from the …

We are happy to announce a devsprint for Linux Test Project (LTP). This devsprint is for developers who are familiar with Linux System Programming and would like to take a plunge into contributing to an open source project.

We are happy to announce our next workshop, "Demystifying Linux Device Drivers". This workshop is for developers who are familiar with Linux in embedded systems, and would like to explore the world of devices and drivers.

One of the pain points in starting with device drivers, is the missing bits …

The "Embedded Linux Device Interfacing Workshop", was organized on July 1 and 2, in Chennai, and on July 15, in Banglore. The workshop was done using our in-house hardware: ZKit-ARM-VF50 and DietIO. The ZKit-ARM-VF50 is the baseboard, powered by a Vybrid VF5xx SoC. The DietIO is the add-on board, that …

Today, Linux runs on a variety of devices, from smartphones to infotainment systems to refrigerators. It is the most popular general purpose operating system, on the planet, used in embedded systems.

The objective of the workshop is to help developers understand how various sensors and actuators are accessed and controlled …

The "Embedded Linux Dojo" was organized by the Embedded Linux Meetup Group. The Embedded Linux Meetup Group is a Zilogic Systems initiative to bring together people working on Linux in Embedded Systems, with the hope to share knowledge and ideas.

The dojo was themed around building a WiFi router from …

The "Understanding Git, Workshop" was organized by Zilogic Systems, on Dec 3. About 46 people from various organizations participated in the workshop.

Git has grown up to become the de-facto version control system for open source software development. Acquiring a good mental model of Git, will help people wield it correctly and work more efficiently. This workshop will provide the required internals of Git, to help people acquire the required mental model …

The "Linux Kernel Porting Workshop", was organized on Sep 10 and 11. About 36 people from various organizations, including CEM Solutions (Bengaluru), EmbDes (Bengaluru) e-con Systems, Logitech, NIELIT (Calicut), Visteon, VVDN Technologies, attended the workshop.

The much awaited "Linux Kernel Porting Workshop" is here! The objective of the workshop is to provide better understanding of the Linux device model, the device tree, and the changes required to port the kernel to a new board. This workshop deals with Board Level Porting. To understand terminologies associated …

This article is about Linux kernel porting, and other related terms like flashing and bring-up. The terms are generally used incorrectly. Through this article I hope to give clear definition of each term and how they relate to one another.

The second edition of the "Linux System Programming Dojo" was organized by Embedded Linux Meetup Group. The Embedded Linux Meetup Group is a Zilogic Systems initiative to bring together people working on Linux in Embedded Systems, with the hope to share knowledge and ideas.

The first coding dojo was held …

The "ARM Bare Metal Programming, Workshop" was organized by Zilogic Systems, on May 21 and 22. About 28 people from various organizations, including Burndy, Microchip, NIELIT Calicut, Electron India, SRM Technologies, Visteon, attended the workshop.

Zilogic is organizing a workshop on the ARM Bare Metal Programming. Writing startup code and linker scripts has been a dark art, mastered only by a few people. Lack of documentation has only aggravated the problem. Through this training programme we hope to unravel the mysteries behind these concepts, and …

Traccar Server is an open source GPS tracking system that supports more than 80 different communication protocols. Version 3.2 of Traccar supports BlackKite’s protocol out of the box. Thanks to the maintainer of Traccar, Anton Tananaev for accepting our patches. This article will show, how to setup Traccar …

The "Dive into Yocto, Workshop" was organized by Zilogic Systems, on 12th and 13th September. About 22 people from various organizations, including Burndy, Identiv, Ingersoll Rand, Microchip and Visteon, attended the workshop.

Zilogic is organizing a workshop on the Yocto Project. Yocto Project is an open source embedded Linux build system similar to Buildroot. While Buildroot uses "make" for task scheduling, Yocto uses bitbake, a tool specialized for integration builds. Yocto in addition provides support for packaging, supports a wide range of …

BlackKite-Fleet is a compact, affordable and platform independent GPRS enabled vehicle tracking system. It features accurate SiRF IV GPS with rich set of IO for vehicle parameter monitoring and control.

FireFly is a family of highly customizable, robust and extensible variable message signs. Designed to be a cloud-ready, connected display for on-the-fly update.

Zilogic is participating in the 4th edition of Traffic InfraTech Expo at NSIC Exhibition Complex, New Delhi. We are demonstrating an upcoming series of M2M products, at the expo.

Visit us at Booth B12!

A DC motor uses a direct current power source to generate torque. It is commonly used in CPU fans, robots as wheels, toys, CD drives, etc. The DC Motor Board from Zilogic can be used to control a DC motor’s speed and direction of rotation. In this first article …

Seven segment displays are electronic display devices used to display decimal digits as a simpler low cost alternatives to more complex dot matrix displays. The Seven Segment Board, from Zilogic, is an 8 digit seven segment display. In this first article, in a series of articles on the Seven Segment …

Embedded systems generally use an audio interface for alert beeps and notifications. The Audio Board from Zilogic, extends a motherboard, with audio capabilities. Using the Audio Board, requires knowledge on the following:

In this …

Stepper motors are used in a wide variety of applications, including computer peripherals like printers, scanners, CD drives, camera lenses, etc. In this first article, in a series of articles on stepper motors, we will introduce the reader to the theory behind the working and control of a stepper motor …

ZigBee is a low power, wireless mesh network standard,largely used in the areas of home automation, medical data collection and industrial control. The ZigBee Board connects Zilogic’s development kits with a UART-I2C header. In addition, the ZigBee Board can also be used with other deveolpment kits that have …

The Board Support Package version 1.6.0 for the ZKit and ZIO platforms is available for download! Read on to find out more about this release.

ZIO is a platform to move embedded development from micro-controllers to the PC, for rapid prototyping. This acheived by extending the IO capabilities of the PC through an USB based add-on ZIO motherboard. The IO interfaces on the ZIO motherboard can be accessed and controlled using high level languages — Python …

ZKit-ARM-1769 is a ARM Cortex M3 based micro-controller development kit from Zilogic Systems. The ZKit-ARM-1769 is capable of networking using Ethernet, CAN and RS-485 bus interface. The board comes along with a free and open source multitasking Unix like operating system called NuttX.

Some people prefer to use IDEs, for software development. This article explains how to use an IDE called Code::Blocks along with ZKit-51-v664 and ZKit-51-RD2 boards.

Code::Blocks has support for SDCC and ARM GCC, making it suitable for embedded software development. Some of the features we will demonstrate here …

NuttX provides a POSIX like API for application development. In this article we will see, how to develop simple NuttX applications. This is the third article in the NuttX series, for the previous articles please see:

This article is a follow-up of the NuttX, Getting Started article. In the previous article we demonstrated NuttX, using the NuttShell application. In this article we will see how to build NuttX and NuttX applications from source.

NuttX is a small footprint Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for microcontroller environments. NuttX provides a POSIX API, with a single process, multi-threaded environment. NuttX has been ported to various architecture including ARM, AVR, AVR32 and Zilog.

In this article, we will explore the file system, storage and networking capabilities, of …

The MVC design pattern was conceived in 1979 at Xerox, and since then many variants have evolved. All web frameworks, today, support some variant of the MVC pattern. But the MVC pattern has been largely ignored in GUI application development. This article describes one variant of the MVC pattern and …

Almost all game programs require a random number generator. When implementing games for embedded systems, generating random numbers raises certain interesting issues. While generation of random number can be done using the rand() C library function, getting a suitable seed is a challenge.

During development and testing of embedded systems, the serial port is used for communicating with the host. This applies to firmware based embedded systems or Linux based embedded systems. But laptops and desktops today generally do not have a serial port. At Zilogic, we hit on this problem every time …

ZigBee is a low power, wireless mesh network standard. It is used in home automation, medical data collection, industrial control, etc.

This article is a first in a series of articles explaining the ZigBee protocol. We start with an introduction to various components of a ZigBee network. The article explains …

Zilogic has launched a course on Android, to help people familiar with Java, to come up to speed with Android Application Development.

Android has become the OS of choice, for smartphone developers. Android is also increasingly being used in embedded systems that require a graphical user interface. These systems include …

Zilogic Systems has launched its second generation of 8051 based motherboards. The ZKit-51-RD2 is a low cost board, and ZKit-51-V664 is a high-end analog capable graphics board. Check the product page for more details.

Zilogic Systems has launched a new range of high quality add-on boards for industry automation and robotics.

These include,

Check the product page for more details.

Zilogic Systems has launched a new course on ARM based embedded systems. Please check the syllabus page for more details.

Zilogic Systems' ZKit-51-V664 8051 Microcontroller development kit is a full featured development kit for prototype development. The ZKit-51-V664 has maximum set of peripherals and provides maximum flexibility with the break-out header for IOs. The ZKit-51-V664 8051 Microcontroller development kit comes with Zilogic’s ZDev library which provides a set of …

The ZKit-51-V664 has a Graphics LCD, that can be used for displaying GUIs, bitmaps, animations, etc. Bitmaps can be easily displayed on the Graphics LCD using the APIs provided by ZDev library. This article shows how to create bitmaps using GIMP, and how to display them on the Graphics LCD …

The ZKit-51-RD2 is an NXP P89V51RD2 based 8051 microcontroller development kit. The board can be used for prototype development by hobbyists and engineers. The board is also suitable for teaching and learning embedded system programming.

All 8051 based microcontrollers from NXP come with some sort of built-in flash memory. The microcontrollers provide multiple methods to program the flash. The most common method is In-System Programming (ISP). In ISP, the code is transfered to the flash, through the serial port, by a built-in ISP bootloader. The …

It is necessary to know the stack utilization levels when software is developed for systems requiring high reliability. A simple technique to determine the stack utilization of a program is watermarking. In this technique the stack is filled with a pattern, and the program is executed. When the stack is …

BASIC is a very popular programming language taught in schools. There have been various derivatives of the BASIC programming language. The most popular ones are GW-BASIC, QBASIC and Visual Basic. In fact there are versions of BASIC for the 8051 as well, called the MCS BASIC-52.

The MCS BASIC-52, is …

Vijay did a talk on Device Interfacing with Python and ZIO at PyCon India 2010. The talk was well received by fellow pythoniasts, read the feedbacks on Twitter.

When your projects get bigger, the internal RAM of the P89V664 is no longer sufficient. External RAM can be used to overcome this limitation. The P89V664 used in the ZKit-51 has 2KB of on-chip external RAM.

The external RAM can be used from SDCC, in two ways

A course on the new language features of Java 5 has been added to the course list. Please check the syllabus page for more details.

Zilogic has launched an Open Source IO framework called the ZIO. The ZIO motherboard is a USB device that provides access to IO interfaces like GPIO, Sensor (ADC), PWM, I2C and SPI. APIs are available in Java and Python to access the ZIO. Please see ZIO Product Page for more …