I had a LabVIEW user group meeting last week talking about embedded platforms and when I got home I saw the Intel Edison collecting dust on my desk:
Since it is x86, I thought I would try to deploy a Linux LabVIEW executable to the Edison and run it in the Run Time Environment. Here is what I did:
1) Install Ubilinux, based on Debian Linux, from: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/loading-debian-ubilinux-on-the-edison
2) Install xvfb, a virtual framebuffer display server (no video on this device), fluxbox display manager and x11vnc:
apt-get install xvfb fluxbox x11vnc xterm
3) Install the prereqs for the LabVIEW RTE (this was already installed with the above, but good to check):
apt-get install libxinerama1 libgl1-mesa-glx
4) Download the RTE and unzip it, I put it in /home as /root gets pretty full
wget http://ftp.ni.com/support/softlib/labview/labview_runtime/2014/Linux/LabVIEW2014RTE_Linux.tgz
tar zxvf LabVIEW2014RTE_Linux.tgz
6) the RTE is an rpm and we need deb so get alien:
apt-get install alien
7) convert the rpm to deb (this takes a while):
alien -k -c labview-2014-rte-14.0.0-1.i386.rpm
8) Install the RTE:
dpkg -i labview-2014-rte_14.0.0_1.i386.deb
9) Install some missing fonts:
apt-get install xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfonts-cyrillic ttf-mscorefonts-installer
At this point, I compiled the "UDP sender" from the examples using LabVIEW for Linux 2014 with my desktop hardcoded as the destination IP address. I copied the executable over to the Edison, ran it as follows:
xvfb-run ./send
and a few seconds later on my desktop:
I am getting UDP packets from my Edison to my host computer sent from a LabVIEW application! I was pretty excited by this. At this point, I decided that I wanted to see if I could get a GUI running.
I started up a virtual display and launched fluxbox using:
Xvfb -screen 0 800x600x16 -ac &
DISPLAY=:0 fluxbox &
And from a linux VM, I created a SSH tunnel and started a VNC connection
ssh -l root -L 5900:localhost:5900 192.168.222.90 'x11vnc -localhost -display :0'
vncviewer localhost
I was greeted with a desktop so I launched a terminal and executed the send program. Here is the result:
So there you have it, LabVIEW executables running on a headless Intel Edison with remote desktop support. Oh, and once the VI is running from the remote desktop, you are free to disconnect and reconnect without terminating the running VI.
As to resource usage, I show while running everything:
root@ubilinux:~# free -h
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 960M 174M 786M 0B 9.0M 100M
-/+ buffers/cache: 64M 896M
Swap: 0B 0B 0B
htop:
1 [##** 9.6%] Tasks: 35, 12 thr; 1 running
2 [##*** 12.7%] Load average: 0.15 0.20 0.11
Mem[|||#**** 65/960MB] Uptime: 00:07:25
Swp[ 0/0MB]
PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command
2018 root 20 0 16132 5428 2772 S 5.0 0.6 0:19.94 x11vnc -localhost
2047 root 20 0 4380 1580 1204 R 5.0 0.2 0:00.83 htop
2033 root 20 0 120M 39620 27756 S 5.0 4.0 0:16.89 ./send
1987 root 20 0 52136 14608 5016 S 3.0 1.5 0:17.00 Xvfb -screen 0 80
2016 root 20 0 12540 6300 2436 S 0.0 0.6 0:02.85 sshd: root@notty
1 root 20 0 2200 716 616 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.81 init [2]
202 root 20 0 2540 1108 716 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.28 udevd --daemon
360 root 20 0 2536 816 428 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 udevd --daemon
366 root 20 0 2536 820 428 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd --daemon
1552 root 20 0 5760 1424 1040 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.14 /sbin/wpa_supplic
1752 root 20 0 27916 1680 1116 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.17 /usr/sbin/rsyslog
1754 root 20 0 27916 1680 1116 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.01 /usr/sbin/rsyslog
1755 root 20 0 27916 1680 1116 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.01 /usr/sbin/rsyslog
1747 root 20 0 27916 1680 1116 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.23 /usr/sbin/rsyslog
1801 root 20 0 2424 608 520 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/udhcpd
1837 ntp 20 0 5304 2020 1572 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.11 /usr/sbin/ntpd -p
F1Help F2Setup F3SearchF4FilterF5Tree F6SortByF7Nice -F8Nice +F9Kill F10Quit
The VI is using about 5% CPU as well as 5% on the the VNC server and 3% on the virtual framebuffer.
Here is the disk usage:
root@ubilinux:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 1.4G 1.3G 78M 95% /
/dev/root 1.4G 1.3G 78M 95% /
devtmpfs 480M 0 480M 0% /dev
tmpfs 97M 300K 96M 1% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 193M 0 193M 0% /run/shm
tmpfs 481M 12K 481M 1% /tmp
/dev/mmcblk0p7 32M 5.3M 27M 17% /boot
/dev/mmcblk0p10 1.3G 125M 1.2G 10% /home
It's pretty tight, you will definitely run out if you do not do the RTE installation from /home. As to IO, I have not played much with doing anything with the IO ports, that's next on my list. I wanted to share my progress so far and get people's feedback.
Thanks
Jon
