<\/p>\n
Why simulate?<\/h2>\n
In addition to the reasons already mentioned, there are a whole range of other advantages:<\/p>\n
- \n
- When you frequently switch between working in the office and working from home, you don't want to move all your equipment with you every time. You're always going to forget something.<\/li>\n
- A hardware abstraction is desirable in principle because it facilitates the Porting<\/strong> to hardware variants or completely new hardware-OS combinations. If you change hardware later, you may have to switch to a different operating system or SDK. With an OSAL, the changes remain manageable.<\/li>\n
- In many of my previous projects, the devices had one or more CAN connections to the controllers of the overall system. If you install a switch in the "right" place, you can test the application on a PC using a USB2CAN interface (this is relatively quick with SDKs from IXXAT or Vector, for example). This allowed customers to conduct initial tests on their laptops in a "real" environment \u2013 long before the first hardware was even available.
\nThere have also been cases where we were able to quickly identify errors in the controller software using the debugger. This would have been a more difficult task with the application on the target.<\/li>\n- As elsewhere, Diversity<\/strong> a win-win situation for everyone. In this particular case, I mean that different Compiler<\/strong> can be used (target platform: gcc, clang \u2013 developer platform: e.g., Visual Studio). Compilers are like us: sensitive souls \u2013 and everyone complains about something different. In this case, different compilers provide a gain in security \u2013 assuming, of course, that all compiler warnings are enabled (anything else is a no-go anyway!).<\/li>\n
- In any case, the fact that it is much simpler Debugging<\/strong> A simulation is worth it. Instead of the usual turnaround cycles (compile\/link \u2013 download \u2013 start debugging; sometimes even via an SD card\/USB stick \u2013 especially nice!), just press F5 and off you go (okay \u2013 I've outed myself as a VS user).<\/li>\n
- On top of that, you can also benefit from additional safety features in the runtime environment. For example, in VS or Clang, you can enable checks for buffer overruns, memory leaks, uninitialized memory access, stack overflows, etc. This saves you the use of extra tools or time-consuming troubleshooting\/debugging on the target. Because when such an error occurs in the field, it can be incredibly expensive or even dangerous!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
How?<\/h2>\n
First, the application is separated into a hardware or OS-independent part and an OSAL layer is created (OSAL=Operating System Abstraction Layer<\/em>). Of course, you could also use the application code #ifdef<\/em>s to enable the target-specific code only in the target build. Many of us have probably encountered such code before. It's not really nice. And that's not the only disadvantage. Readability, maintainability, testability, portability to other hardware\/OS\/... suffer.<\/p>\n
![\"if-def-Hell\"](\"https:\/\/medtech-ingenieur.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/ifdef-hell-300x288.png\")
Everyone has probably seen this or even worse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n A version of OSAL is implemented for the operating system on which the developers are working (usually Windows, Linux less frequently). Naturally, OSAL and the application for the development environment will have slightly different runtime behavior than that of the target platform. However, this isn't so important at first. The main thing is that application development isn't unnecessarily hampered.<\/p>\n
- In many of my previous projects, the devices had one or more CAN connections to the controllers of the overall system. If you install a switch in the "right" place, you can test the application on a PC using a USB2CAN interface (this is relatively quick with SDKs from IXXAT or Vector, for example). This allowed customers to conduct initial tests on their laptops in a "real" environment \u2013 long before the first hardware was even available.