INTERFACING WITH THE EIB/KNX A RTLINUX DEVICE DRIVER FOR THE TPUART

摘要

This article presents the basis for a variety of advanced Linux software applications for configuring, monitoring and controlling the European Installation Bus: interfaces and their corresponding device drivers. Thus, we shortly outline connections realized between a PC and the well-known bus coupling units BCU1 and BCU2 and then go into detail for a realization based on the rather new TPUART chip. Using this chip requires the system to meet hard deadlines, which cannot always be kept by standard Linux. To address the timing constraints, up-to-date real-time Linux alternatives are briefly conferred with a special scope whether they are freely available and have an embedded version. Once done, we point out the design of a RTLinux-TPUART device driver implemented as kernel module and finally compare it to an existing solution for standard Linux by analyzing benchmark tests.