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Tutorial: installation

From RFID Guardian

This describes the complete installation procedure, including how to obtain and/or build prerequisites for the Guardian Software.

Contents

Configurations

The RFID Guardian software distribution can build a number of different configurations:

  • programs to run on the embedded system; the obvious example is the Guardian Main program;
  • program on a PC that controls an RFID Reader; we include the software for the Philips Pegoda reader;
  • simulator, that uses sockets in stead of RFID communication; this allows to run a Guardian Main and a Reader (etc) and have them communicate in a very controlled setup;
  • Java program to interact with the Guardian over BlueTooth, to run on a cell phone.

Software requirements

These different configurations have different software requirements, see below for documentation of the various components:

  • for a Windows PC, CoLinux or the Linux emulator Cygwin is required;
  • for the embedded system, a checkout of the RTOS eCos is required, and a cross-compiler toolchain; we provide a port of eCos for our Guardian hardware;
  • for a commercial Reader connected to a PC, the DLLs and device drivers for this piece of hardware are necessary;
  • for the simulator, nothing special is required;
  • for the Java modules, Java J2ME and Ant are required.


The software consists of several components, some of them provided by us, some to be obtained over the internet.

Software Components

GNU make

The build tool used everywhere in our software.

Subversion

We use [Subversion] repositories for storing and distributing all software that is managed by the RFID Guardian team

Cygwin

preferred for native Windows systems that use the Pegoda Reader

MS Windows users may install [Cygwin], a Linux emulation layer. For building BlackFin software, Windows users are advised to use CoLinux.

Philips Pegoda Reader Software

The RFID Guardian software can interface with the Philips Pegoda Reader

CoLinux

preferred for Windows systems to do cross-compiler builds for the RFID Guardian device

An installation of Linux that lives side-by-side with MS Windows. This actually runs the Linux kernel and Linux software in parallel with MS Windows, without emulation (or rebooting).

Toolchain

A toolchain is required for building the software. For eCos and u-boot, a gcc cross-compiler is mandatory.

eCos

We have our own copy of the eCos repository tree, with added packages for BlackFin and RFID Guardian peripherals.

User interface in Java J2ME

A graphical user interface to control the RFID Guardian, either from a cell phone using a BlueTooth connection, or natively

MRG, the RFID Guardian Software

This repository contains the device drivers, library and high-level Guardian software.

u-boot

We mirror a version of u-boot used for the RFID Guardian. Modifying the bootloader is not for the faint of heart. Doing it wrong can render your RFID Guardian (temporarily) unusable.