Development Environment Microcontroller Linux-Powered Embedded Systems
Masters Degree Project
This site is provided as a means of documentation for a Masters Degree project undertaken by Matt Olinger under advisement
of Dr. Malinowski of the
Bradley University
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Objective
The primary objective is to document the use of uClinux (microcontroller Linux) on a Freescale 5282LITE development board and provide a functional example such as a webserver with cgi capabilities.
Abstract
uClinux (microcontroller Linux) is an open source operating system designed to fit and run on 32-bit microcontrollers. In the spirit of Linux, it is highly configurable prior to compile time, allowing the compiled operating system to selectively incorporate the features of a full PC operating system into a necessarily small footprint for use with microcontrollers and embedded systems. Some typical applications of uClinux have been seen in the realm of embedded networking and server applications, the wide spread usage of which have made 32-bit microcontrollers more desirable, more heavily produced, and more cost effective, which has further fueled the development of uClinux. To induce progression in the ability to teach and utilize these technologies, it is necessary to document the procedures involved with configuring and running a core, functional example implementation on real world hardware. With that in mind, a web server using cgi has been developed using uClinux as the operating system and a 32-bit Motorola Coldfire microcontroller as the target hardware, and more importantly, all steps in the development of this system have been thoroughly documented for use in future projects and curriculum.