New hardware support or replacement proposal

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Harald Welte laforge at gnumonks.org
Tue Mar 21 16:51:19 UTC 2017


Hi E:V:A,

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 04:40:05PM +0200, E:V:A wrote:
> > Ok, so you'd be usign hihg-speed bit-banging and implement everyting in
> > software, like a 'software defined ISO7816 UART'.   That's quite some
> > coe that needs to be developed.
> 
> That was the idea. And since RPi is ARM and popular for all sorts of
> other embedded devices. I  guess there ought to be a similar solution
> out there already.

I would be highly surprised.  You basically have to start from scratch.

> > Also, keep in mind that the SAM7/SAM3 support full industrial
> > temperature range, which is not offered by consumer-grade devics like
> > the Raspberry Pi.
> 
> This is an entertaining answer as RPis have been used as weather
> stations in arctic climates where winter Temp can easily reach -20C. 

Well, this may be the case, but there is one topic of using commercial
temperature rated equipment out of spec (which may work in many cases,
but may break in all kinds of ways, also from one production batch to
the other, because a different capacitor model/brand was used, and it
has a different thermal curve, which doesn't require the performance at
-20 or even down to -40 centigrade.  So basically "you are just lucky"

The other part is in professional industrial electronics development
(which I've been doing for quite some years, with interruptions), where
you make sure that all parts you use are fully qualified over the
industrial temperature range, and you cannot have the above-mentioned
surprises.

> I doubt you will find anyone doing any SIMtracing there. :)

You would be surprised.  Some people are using SIMtrace or related
devices as part of permanent installations in order to assess e.g.
cellular network security.

As much as I appreciate the enthusiasm, creativity and success of a lot
of the arduino/raspi/... based embedded projects that kome from the
wider maker community, there are quite some parts I don't like about it.
The lack of industrial tmeperature/climate spec on the one hand, the
incredibly complex and large software stack that might need to be
maintained.  The issue about using commercial-grade SD/MMC cards as
opposed to industrial-grade mmc (wit proper SMART-like features to get
advance notification of wear levelling statistics) or good old NOR flash
(SAM3), ...

> I agree and as I said on top, you have me convinced. 

Great!

So let's hope you can find some time and energy got help out.  As
indicated, I'm happy to send out some free SIMtrace with SAM3, or
alternatively you could help with (re)integrating the tracing
functionality in the simtrace2.x firmware branch, or porting the
simtrace2.x firmware to 1.x hardware, or work on wireshark dissectors,
...

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>           http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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