[BangPypers] Industrial Control Systems in Python

[Vishal]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 12:12 PM, Anand Balachandran Pillai <
abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 7:56 PM, Vishal <vsapre80 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at nibrahim.net.in
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > Vishal <vsapre80 at gmail.com> writes:
> > >
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > > 1) The scenario you describe is very close to what we would like to
> > > > have...except that I wish to have an SBC running the actual control
> > > > code in Python and a small micro-controller board to manage
> > > > peripherals like ADC and PWM pins...that would translate to the
> > > > control actions. These two talk over wire, using some protocol...some
> > > > request-response bytes structure that we invent :))
> > >
> > > I wrote a custom JSON based protocol but later in the project, I wished
> > > I had used something more standard.
> > >
> > > > Now the next thing is...what is busybox and can I use it in this case
> > > > on the SBC? and where to find such SBCs....
> > >
> > > Busybox[1] is a single executable that provides the functionality of
> > > many of the basic UNIX userspace utilities (like ls etc.) depending on
> > > what name it's called with. You can simply symlink ls etc. to busybox
> > > and it'll work. It's very useful for embedded situations since you can
> > > just drop in a single executable and get all the basic things for free.
> > >
> > > > Any pointers... ?
> > >
> > > Apropos SBCs, I recently bought a beagle board[2] for someone who was
> > > working on a project. It's ARM based and is quite powerful. It has tons
> > > of ports you can connect stuff to. I think he booted it with something
> > > called Angstrom[3] and then we connected to it via. serial and got a
> > > complete environment. It's powerful enough to run a proper small
> > > GNU/Linux. I don't think you need busybox and things like that. This is
> > > the only one *I* know of. You can order it in Bangalore from Tenet
> > > technologies[4] and it costs a little less than 10k.
> >
>
> I recall there was an excellent presentation in Pycon 2010 by one Mr.Vijay
> about a programmable hardware interface called with an I/O framework
> written in Python by his company Zilogic.
>
> Details about this are here.
>
> http://in.pycon.org/2010/talks/52-device-interfacing-with-python-and-zio
>
> Looks like the toolkit is mainly meant for hobbyists and for prototyping
> but I think it could be used for your purpose as well.
>
> http://www.zilogic.com/zio-mb.html
>
> I wonder if it uses pyserial behind the scenes.
>
> HTH.
>
> --Anand
>
>
> --Anand
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>

Anand,

Thanks for the link.

About BeagleBoard:
I found out from the BeagleBoard guys that there efforts are tuned toward
providing embedded computing opportunities to the community...because of
which....
a) They cannot guarantee the availability of this hardware...they reserve
the right to change this as and when they feel the need. ( Industrial
automation requires at least 10 years of availability)
c) They cannot guarantee that this hardware is suitable for industry
use...so as to avoid potential law suits from customers for whom the board
fails (This is OK, since we incur that responsibility with open source all
the time...and this is an open hardware platform)

I feel its still a great platform for prototyping your app, and then later
on going for an industrial grade SBC.

-- 
Thanks and best regards,
Vishal Sapre

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