Key technologies

  • TCP/IP and UDP/IP
  • modBus, master and slave
  • Optimized fast network data exchange
  • Qt Network module
  • Qt framework
  • XML parsing

Platforms

  • Windows XP
  • GNU/Linux

Study and development of a module for an embedded sensor software that brings support for new standard and proprietary protocols.

Background

This project was part of the integration effort of an innovative gas detection technology as an OEM part inside an industrial product.

Description

Data are exchanged using 2 protocols:

  1. over TCP/IP and UDP/IP (data burst) using a proprietary protocol, in a specific optimised data framing. Data objects are addressed using a key mapping and an XML definition containing an object dictionary.
  2. over TCP/IP and RS232 using the modBus protocol. The module is a modBus slave.

The module manages connection hand-checking, data encoding and decoding, methods and parameters remote calls, address translation and data mapping. It also manages data broadcast over UDP with different burst periods. As part of the protocol, the software implements a device discovery service.

The module is designed to accept new plug-ins to support additional protocols.

As for all our protocol development, we spent time to implemented strong, extensive and exhaustive unit tests and automatic testing procedures, managed by CTest and CDash. We ensured a bullet-proofed implementation for a robust code, ready to be deployed at the heart of an important widely distributed industrial equipment.

Specific client applications have been developed (master modBus client, tcp/ip protocol simulator) as part of the testing and validation system.