Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

Embedded computers have become very complex in the last few years and developers need to easily manage them by focusing on how to solve a problem without wasting time in finding supported peripherals or learning how to manage them. The main challenge with experienced embedded programmers and engineers is really how long it takes to turn an idea into reality, and we show you exactly how to do it. This book shows how to interact with external environments through specific peripherals used in the industry. We will use the latest Linux kernel release 4.4.x and Debian/Ubuntu distributions (with embedded distributions like OpenWrt and Yocto). The book will present popular boards in the industry that are user-friendly to base the rest of the projects on - BeagleBone Black, SAMA5D3 Xplained, Wandboard and system-on-chip manufacturers. Readers will be able to take their first steps in programming the embedded platforms, using C, Bash, and Python/PHP languages in order to get access to the external peripherals. More about using and programming device driver and accessing the peripherals will be covered to lay a strong foundation. The readers will learn how to read/write data from/to the external environment by using both C programs or a scripting language (Bash/PHP/Python) and how to configure a device driver for a specific hardware. After finishing this book, the readers will be able to gain a good knowledge level and understanding of writing, configuring, and managing drivers, controlling and monitoring applications with the help of efficient/quick programming and will be able to apply these skills into real-world projects.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

What is an Ethernet network device?


A computer network (or more simply, a network) is a telecommunications equipment that allows computers to exchange data with each other. In a computer network, several computers exchange data with each other using a data link, which can be made of cable media or wireless media. More specifically, the Ethernet network is a family of wired computer-networking technologies commonly used in Local Area Network (LAN) where every device communicating over it divides a stream of data into shorter pieces called frames that contain a lot of information useful for data communication as the source and destination addresses, error-checking data, and so on. Then, obviously, there is also the data link layer (as per the OSI model) where the information are stored.

In a GNU/Linux system, an Ethernet device is a computer peripheral that is used to get access to an Ethernet network and then to exchange data with other Ethernet-equipped computers. In a GNU/Linux system, these...