Month: August 2018

Jasper Nuyens was there at the cradle of Embedded Linux and developed the first Embedded Linux training in the world in 2005 in collaboration with Mind in Leuven (now Essensium). High Tech Institute has been offering the training in Embedded Linux in the Netherlands for a number of years, on an exclusive basis. The Belgian Linux pioneer tells us the ins and outs of his five-day course.

Jasper Nuyens, founder of Linux Belgium and Embedded Linux trainer at High Tech Institute.

Just as Jasper Nuyens went deep into Linux in the mid-nineties, there was an initiative to reduce the footprint of the system. This ‘Linux Router Project’ was an effort to run a complete Linux-based router from a 1.4 megabyte floppy disk. Nuyens: ‘This was done in order to use old PCs with a number of network cards as a server or router. It was a big challenge in which the Linux kernel compilation played a very important part. The tricks we had to pull out of our sleeves to make this work were actually a beginning of embedded Linux: a small system where you can add many applications.’ The project lives on in current router projects such as OpenWRT and DD-WRT.

Due to his extensive experience, organisations call in Nuyens’ help ‘if there are really difficult problems.’ This ensures that he can delve more deeply into very special cases. Nuyens: ‘That makes the job very interesting. It also ensures that our course stays up to date.’

Nuyens always adapts his training sessions to the latest developments. ‘We now had about a hundred editions, whilst we are on version 65 of the course.’ He cites an example of the embedded build-system Buildroot and OpenEmbedded / Yocto that became available in the new millennium. ‘We also include that in our training. We always adjust the material to recent developments.’

The biggest Embedded Linux problems land on Jasper Nuyens desk.

What is it that makes embedded Linux training so successful?
‘With Linux you have the source code of all the components, from the boot loader, kernel to the tens of thousands of applications that are available in user space. You can use everything and have a lot of choices. This means that you have to learn to see the wood through the trees. There are many possibilities. Many application behave a little different, but you can refine them. That is actually the core of our course: helping people find their way and make the best choices.’

You can also learn everything for yourself on Internet.
‘Of course, it is not really rocket science. You can learn individual topics online. The embedded Linux course, however, brings all things together and provides the whole picture, from the ground up. Even people who have been immersing themselves in Embedded Linux for a long time do not always see how things fit together or how each of the different components interacts with the others. The training provides you with a jump start, a push in the embedded Linux world.’

Linux is not a real-time operating system. To what extent does this play a role in the choice for this OS for embedded systems?
‘When people start using Embedded Linux, they usually think that real-time is an important requirement for their system. They often work with microcontrollers at a low clock speed. The timing restrictions can then impose real-time behaviour. Effectively, however, they often don’t need it. The current Systems On Chip sometimes run Linux with a gigahertz or more. As a result, real-time use of Linux is rarely required in practice.’
‘There are also different levels with which you can work in real time on Linux. We go into that in our training. With the standard Linux kernel you have soft real-time possibilities. But you can also turn Linux a hard real-time operating system and there are also intermediate forms. The students learn to make these choices depending on their needs.’

To what extent do you go into the legal aspects of Open Source?
‘We do not provide legal training, but we do make it clear what each of the different Open Source licenses mean and what their results are, including the patenting of software and hardware and trademark issues. Many software developers do not know enough about the consequences of having chosen Open Source. They need to be able to keep their management well informed about this and the few requirements imposed by Open Source licenses.’
‘Some are so enthusiastic about the Open Source story that they do not want to say anything negative about it. But companies that use and implement open source software need to know exactly what they need to do. They also need to have objective information about the obligations and risks.’

Participants should preferably have experience with Linux and C programming experience, but is it essential?
‘That’s right. It is nice to have it. We receive two types of students. We have those who have a lot of experience in embedded, but have limited Linux knowledge. And we have those with Linux experience, even with a lot of Embedded Linux experience, who want to deepen their knowledge.’
‘There is a very large difference in level between both profiles. The first group has hardly any experience on the command line. That is a big step for them. On their laptop they have a Linux ‘command prompt’ and on the embedded board they also have ‘command prompt.’ They cannot mix them up. If your embedded board enters the boot in boot mode, in the boot loader, then that is another prompt where you can type different kind of commands. The same occurs: you cannot mix them up.’
‘People from the embedded world without Linux experience usually find it tougher. We find that both groups help each other. We start the course with information that is fairly basic for people who have already worked with Linux. However, it offers the necessary depth to discover new things, so that the more experienced embedded Linux people do not get bored. It is a case of balancing, but the group is sufficiently small to deal with that properly and answer questions from each participant.’

Eight participants is the maximum number.
‘Yes, eight is our magic number, as we have gradually discovered. Because during the training everyone asks questions from their own perspective. The loose ends that they cannot immediately link to their existing knowledge. That is why we need a degree of interactivity. Students program their platform during the training and there are more advances optional exercises for those who are faster. It works well when they can immediately ask their questions and I can immediately look into them.’
‘Linux also has a very steep learning curve. In the beginning, you have to assimilate a lot of information. We want to help everyone move forward to really make a real jump start.’

Is that always possible?
‘We are actually doing pretty well there. The internal operation of the Linux kernel is the toughest part. That is not about how the programs work on the kernel, but about the kernel internally. That is a difficult part for people who already find the material tough. It adds an extra layer of complexity. If we notice that the whole group is slower, we will spend less time on it.’
‘We also offer a separate course for kernel development. People who have to build device drivers can follow the kernel development course after this training. Following the Embedded Linux course first, is a requirement unless people are working with Linux at least 5 years.’

Which people are actually too early?
‘Those who have only been working only with microcontrollers and have little knowledge of Linux. We make sure that they can work on the command line, that they can upgrade their board to a new software version that they have fully compiled themselves and that they can boot from the network, using the network file system as a root filesystem, and so on. That works without prior knowledge by letting them do a number of exercises, but all participants are helped with this if they have – in advance – learned working with the Linux command line.’

Will more experienced people get their money’s worth?
‘Absolutely. People with experience in Linux or embedded Linux won’t get bored. The more they know in advance, the more they will get out of it. We provide so much in-depth information and background information that they will always learn. We go wide and very deep.’

In his Embedded Linux training, participants start working with a Beaglebone Black platform.

This is a print with a Sitara system on chip from Texas Instruments. This American chip manufacturer founded the non-profit BeagleBone Foundation to provide Linux support for these platforms. ‘It is primarily a showcase for the Sitara platform,’ says Nuyens. ‘But it also gives developers a practical step forwards. Everyone can play around with the technology for free. ‘The entire BeagleBone design, the complete PCB layout with all its variants can be completely reused by the customers. By making minor changes to the reference design you can speed up the roll-out of new products by reducing possibly much long work on the software side.’

If desired, Nuyens also has other boards for the course available. It is possible to run the training on Freescale’s i.MX 6 platform (nowadays NXP). ‘This is also a popular platform in the Linux world. The i.MX6 family has single, double and quad core variants. The latter are more powerful for multimedia applications.’ Other variants on which the embedded Linux training can take place are the ZedBoard from Avnet and Atmel’s AVR32 platform. Training on these platforms by Nuyens usually runs on specific requests, typically delivered in-house at customer locations.

Also read the interview with Jasper Nuyens in Bits&Chips.

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of Bits&Chips.

The high tech industry is exciting and dynamic. But if you get the feeling that you are always one step behind the facts, that your work is never finished and you still take your stress from work home, then it’s high time to change the way you work. Frank Rood, as an experienced system architect and technical manager, knows exactly which obstacles you can come up against and how to overcome them within time management. He also draws richly from his own experience. ‘I have learned how to deal with every single pitfall that exist.’

Frank Rood (1968) knows time management and the high tech world through-and-through. ‘After completing my degree in mechanical engineering, with a specialisation in precision engineering technology, a course that nowadays falls under mechatronics, I have been involved in multidisciplinary electronics and software all my life. During the first ten years of my career, I was involved in product development within the semiconductor industry, including the development of machines and medical instruments. After my time as a systems architect and technical project manager, I became manager of a mechanical department. Later that post became more and more multidisciplinary, with combinations between hardware, software and process technology.’

Choose what you enjoy doing

As a manager, Rood started in 2000 with an impossible assignment. Besides managing a department with more than fifty employees, he also continued his work as a designer. This resulted in enormous time pressure, with the accompanying stress and bad time management. ‘In order to be able to combine these two roles, I started looking into time management. Then I discovered tools and resources to deal with my available time in a smarter manner. I immediately deployed those skills. In the end, I succeeded in both completing the project well and leading the department. Due to the skills that I learned. I liked the subject so much, that I shared my knowledge with colleagues and with the people I managed.

My last role as R & D director at Besi was very interesting in terms of content, but I didn’t like the accompanying politics at the top of the organisation. I realised that I came home much happier after a day during which I had trained or coached people how to deal better with their working hours. That is why in 2013 I started full-time with my own coaching company. Now I have the freedom to choose assignments that I enjoy, that I get energy from and that really have value for others. In doing so, I mainly focus on the technical sector. For example, I currently work together with a Swedish company in the field of modular architecture. In doing so, I have partly an advisory role and partly a role as an organisation coach to make their company and product more modular, and above all to teach them how to work in a different way.’

Consultation overkill

Rood has now transferred his knowledge and experience of time management into a training that is specifically aimed at product developers in the high tech world. Trainees learn the skills with which they actually get done the things that they themselves consider to be important. ‘For 25 years I have been on the shop floor of companies that develop products and during that time I have seen companies where things are really fantastic and the most beautiful things are being created. There have also been companies that have failed completely, companies in which incredibly intelligent, beautiful, smart, creative people did not come into their own. And that really hurts me. Because those failures happen at companies that are poorly organised or due to all sorts of external factors, and because people have to work in conditions where there are too many disruptions. And those disruptions are totally unnecessary.’

Due to an overkill of consultations and distractions by mail, apps or other means of communication People no longer have either the room, the time or the peace in which to do creative work. During his training, Frank discusses these problems with the participants and tells them how to solve them.

Rood refers to noisy office gardens, an overkill of consultations and distractions by mail, apps or other means of communication. ‘This kind of distraction is increasing. People no longer have either the room, the time or the peace in which to do creative work. And without that, the fantastic potential of all these brilliant people is lost. Because creativity only thrives when there is real peace and time in which to create products. When people are in a stressful situation, the prefrontal cortex no longer works, they don’t get new ideas. And if you are disturbed every ten minutes, you can never go deeply into your brain. Then you cannot write, and are unable to design or code software. Therefore I coach these people and these companies so that all their developers are in the right environments and have the skills with which they can really do their work.’

Professionals often have difficulty with the tension between their actual work and the high intensity of their working environment. They are more concerned with day-to-day issues or their email than with their actual task. Or they find it difficult to say no to a colleague’s request. ‘It is all about managing all those external impulses in the right way, so that you can keep yourself busy with what you are hired for. If you don’t manage that well, you get stressed and if it really goes wrong, a burn-out. You need skills with which you can shield yourself without becoming a hermit.’

Sharing experiences on high work pressure is an important part of the time management training.

‘Saying no is particularly difficult, for example, because it is believed that the relationship with a colleague will suffer from a ‘no’ or that it will then become more difficult to ask the colleague for a favour. But those convictions usually turn out to be incorrect. ‘Don’t use too many words to say no, be clear in your message. It all starts by being clear to yourself about what your own goals are, what you really want to do. As soon as you know that, you can deal with impulses from your environment much more easily.’

Frank Rood is fanatic with time management since he is super sensitive to stress and feels responsible. Especially perfectionist and people having diffuculties saying no are sensitive to become over-worked or even to have a burn-out. ‘I show all the characteristics of an average trainee and therefore I understand the technicians who come to these trainings so well. I know their job, I understand their working conditions and I have learned by trial and error to deal with it. In a short period of time, I can teach them all those things.’

Mono-tasking and dealing with disruptions

Rood’s training course starts with a whole day’s explanation of the theory behind time management when trainees can also practice with each other. ‘The theoretical basis is perfectly understandable, the problem lies in actually putting it into practice. Therefore, the first day we look at what is actually going wrong, where the problem lies and what it is that people want to achieve. Setting goals is crucial. Once you have identified your goal, you can make choices and determine which things have priority and which are unnecessary because they don’t contribute to your goal. Then we look at the tools and at the time management matrix. With this matrix you can determine what is important and urgent and how you can sort your tasks accordingly. We go into mono-tasking, the benefit of doing only one thing at a time and finishing it off. And how to deal with disruptions. We then make a plan so that people really know what they will do differently the next day at work. And they get a tool to help them keep their intentions: a buddy from the group or a colleague who helps with practice in the method over the following weeks. Because everything is aimed at getting people to work immediately with what they have learned. I phone them during the week to hear how things are progressing.’

The quadrant with tasks and disruptions classified in order of importance and urgency, is a simple tool for setting priorities in your available time.

After three weeks, there is an additional half-day meeting, during which the trainees recount what has and has not succeeded. This feedback day forms the basis for the success of the training course. ‘Because the course participants know that they have to be accountable on the feedback day, they actually get to work. By the time we meet again, they have worked for over a month using new daily habits and structurally changing their behaviour. For example, they create a to-do list every morning or they permanently switch off email notifications. Some people ask me if I want to call them again four or six weeks after the training course, as reinforcement. Or they agree to meet with their buddy.’

Three weeks after, participants come back for another half day of training. This half day is the basis for success since the participants feel their responsibility for being devoted. ‘By the time we see each other again, they have had one month in which they changed their daily habits and structural behaviour’ says lecturer Frank Rood.

A conscious choice

Also people who are heading towards a burn-out, have a burn-out or are just recovering from it, benefit from Rood’s training. Not least because he himself also suffered a burn-out. In that period he was manager at a department where, after a reorganisation, fewer people had to do exactly the same amount of work. ‘I felt bad about that reorganisation, where I had to send away a number of people. Everyone was then overstretched and due to a sense of responsibility to my employees I ended up trying to save them by partly taking over their work. That went fine for a long time, because I was strong and of course good at time management. My private environment did give alarm signals. For example, my partner asked if everything was alright, I noticed that I was so tired and sleeping badly and caught all sorts of ailments. But I ignored the signs, because in such a stress mode you are full of adrenaline and then you don’t see that things are going wrong.’

Rood collapsed on holiday. ‘Literally. I fell down and was unable to stand up anymore. It was quite shocking for someone who is quite a control freak to be completely out of control. Moreover, I felt extremely guilty: I finally had time to spend with my family and now I was just lying in my tent on my own…. Fortunately I was back on my feet after a few days.’

After that holiday, Rood changed course drastically. ‘Since then I have been running twice a week and I still do that. I started to slow down a lot and let things slide away from me more easily, I didn’t have to take on all the responsibility anymore. So I chose very consciously for my health and my family. And after that I went back to work fairly quickly, even though I went from almost sixty hours to forty hours a week. And I took a day off in between. That helped.’

Rood calls the loss of control, and a body that takes over, typical of a burn-out. ‘Your body understands that your head cannot handle it anymore and just stamps on the brakes. The trick is to recognise those symptoms the next time before your body takes over.’

He finds he himself the greatest enemy in this respect. ‘Why am I so fanatically involved with time management? I am super sensitive to stress, I feel very responsible, I am a perfectionist and relationship-oriented and I can hardly say no. So I show all the characteristics of the average trainee and have all the pitfalls within me. That’s why I understand the technicians who come to this training course so well. I know their work, I understand their working conditions and I learned to deal with them by trial and error. So they can learn all these things during the training course, in a short time.

Frank Rood; ‘Failures come from bad organisation, several external facts and the fact that people have to deal with too many disruptions. Those disruptions are unnessecary.’

In addition to this skills training course, Rood also guides people on an individual basis, as a coach. In doing so, he goes into detail on deeply-set themes and convictions that form obstacles at work. ‘In addition, I also pay attention to nutrition and exercise. With people who are in the midst of a burnout or crisis, we first look at practical measures: how do you get more sleep? How are you looking after yourself? What kind of exercise are you doing? And what can you do at work? Only when that is working do we work on your convictions. Ultimately, the question is: at the end of your life, will you have done what you wanted to do? So that you don’t think on your deathbed: if only I had spent more time on my relationship, or I wish I had seen my children more or that I had made that trip. Because then it is too late. My biggest wish is that people don’t get in that situation. And that they can conclude that they have done the things they wanted to do, things that make sense of their existence.’

This article is written by Mathilde van Hulzen, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.

Mechatronics System Design part 1 and part 2 are amongst the most popular training courses in the high tech industry. The courses originated in Philips CFT, where system development became increasingly complex in the 1980s. Rien Koster saw that the solution lay in better collaboration between disciplines. Former CFT member, Jan van Eijk, explains why it is good for top specialists to hang out with, and talk regularly to colleagues from other disciplines.

It is 1986, when Rien Koster – one of the godfathers of Dutch mechatronics – starts an ambitious project at Philips. His idea is to take all leading specialists from mechanics, electronics, control engineering, software and measurement technology out of their sanctuaries and have them work together on a mechatronic system. They baptise the project Fast and Accurate 86 (FA86). The plan seems to be a guarantee for success, but in practice the star players fight with each other. Each and every one of them thinks they should take the lead.

Koster continues. And finally FA86 delivers the Famm robot, a two-arm system with large direct drive engines such as you find in submarines. The Famm (fast and accurate manipulator module) is so strong and fast that other robots fade in comparison. Unfortunately, the solution is too expensive for the industry.

‘Technically speaking, the Famm robot was an amazing feat, a fantastic example of what you can achieve if you make all top specialists work together,’ says Jan van Eijk. Van Eijk was, for many years, the mechatronics figurehead at Philips. In 2010, together with former CFT colleagues Adrian Rankers and Maarten Steinbuch, he founded the Mechatronics Academy, the partner of the High Tech Institute which is responsible for all mechatronics training.

According to Van Eijk, the FA86 project showed, above all, how difficult it is to bring the various disciplines together on an equal basis. ‘A mechanical engineer can come up with an amazingly beautiful and feasible design, without realising that his design will never work in practice. The language that his colleague from control engineering uses to explain that – with his decibels and Bode diagrams – is a mystery for the mechanic. ‘

There is often a lack of mutual respect between the different technical disciplines, says Jan van Eijk. The mechatronic guru advocates training specialists, and, at the same time, training them to  communicate efficiently with their colleagues from related fields. They cannot master everything in detail, but they must understand a bit of everything, especially the discipline-specific language.

Koster often shows a graph which portrays all specialists as a Dirac function, remembers Van Eijk. ‘They are very good at one thing, but their knowledge is not wide,’ explains Van Eijk. ‘Their managers and directors were shown to be wide, with not so much height. On average, they were about equally intelligent. We were looking for specialists who were slightly more widely oriented so that they could talk to experts from other fields.’

Philips CFT started a ten-day course to bring down the walls between the specialist kingdoms. During the training, all relevant disciplines came into the limelight and the participants learned what their colleagues were concerned about. Teachers talked about their own expertise, so that the students got used to the jargon. The goal was to increase respect for oneother’s disciplines, says Van Eijk. ‘And arouse their curiosity about the other. If someone in another department asks why they are doing this way and not that way, it should not produce a hostile reaction. This had often happened in the past.’

All new employees at the mechatronics departments of Philips received the training. ‘Often we pulled the PhDs to pieces first’, laughs Van Eijk. ‘They thought they were great and we showed them what they did not know yet. We still wanted great specialists with the best scientific, latest knowledge, but they had to be able to talk to their colleagues. Otherwise it was no good.’

Demystification

The mechatronics training course was a great success at Philips and is now in its thirtieth year, and since 2010 running from the Mechatronics Academy. Mechatronics Academy is offering the course under the name Mechatronics System Design (abbreviated as ‘Metron’) via the High Tech Institute. Because it is difficult for many participants to be away from work for two weeks, the ten-day course has been divided into two sessions of one week each (part 1 and part 2).

Van Eijk is very clear about the usefulness of the Mechatronics System Design course: ‘It takes you a week. That is roughly two percent of what you work in a year. And it makes you ten percent more effective. That’s a gut feeling, but over these past thirty years, I’ve seen how it changes people, how it affects the relationship with colleagues in a multidisciplinary environment. People are able to communicate differently.’

Mechatronics System Design is about the demystification of all disciplines. ‘If I ask a professor about his profession, he will soon have a tendency to tell me about the latest developments. That takes place in a language that is cut out for him, but is totally unintelligible to me,’ says Van Eijk. ‘During the training we discuss a fictitious case about a printer concept from Océ. The trainees then notice that they can already say a great deal about the wishes that Océ has put on the table with a number of simple secondary school sums.’

Jan van Eijk: ‘The training course takes you a week and makes you ten percent more effective.’

The lecturers from all disciplines discuss exactly what is needed to enable mutual communication between the specialists. ‘We will not be able to avoid a number of basic tools,’ says Van Eijk. ‘A Bode diagram for example. Many people have seen that sometimes, but have hardly ever used it in practice. On the basis of such a diagram, a control engineer can explain clearly to a mechanical engineer what problem he is struggling with. If they want to find a solution together, it must therefore be part of their common language.’

Regarding the basic principles of the course, little has changed in the past thirty years. However, technical subjects have been added, such as thermal design and metrology. Is there more attention given to software, a discipline that is becoming increasingly important in mechatronics? ‘Well,’ Van Eijk answers thoughtfully, ‘that is a bit more nuanced. Yes, it is becoming more important because the amount of software used and the effort that it requires are increasing. But if we look at functionality, it is different. For high tech mechatronics, functionally, you only need a limited amount of software. Of course it should be well organized, in the background, with event handling, error messages, user interfaces, you name it. However, the contribution of the functional software is at most a few percent of the software as a whole.’

Master your profession

‘Mechatronics system design’ therefore revolves around the cooperation between the various disciplines. Is this not always reflected in the curricula in the universities?  ‘Collaborating across the boundaries of the university departments is still fairly incidental,’ says Van Eijk. ‘It goes terribly well in the definition phase and when it is decided who gets how much money for which PhD student. After that, everyone dives into his own foxhole to perform his own part in perfect, splendid isolation. The High Tech Systems Centre is a step in the right direction. Perhaps people will emerge that are more inclined towards a cooperative relationship ‘

The course has a strong industrial background. ‘Recently ,there was a student who told me that he also attended a mechatronics course at the university and therefore might hear things that he had known for a long time,’ says Van Eijk. ‘That risk is not that great. In the case of a university course, the lecturer devotes a great deal of attention to his own discipline and the scientific depth of the same. We only have teachers from the industry. We tell you how it works in practice. And there is a considerable difference in emphasis. At university, students may learn more about how to count on an electronic network and make calculations about mechanics. You learn a few skills that can be very useful, but you cannot have a good discussion with another specialist. My conviction is that we have to train great mechanical engineers, electronics engineers and control engineers and have them work together to build great machines.’

Van Eijk is therefore very critical about the mechatronics education offered by a number of higher professional education programs. ‘We want nothing to do with someone who is half-electronic and half-mechanic. He does not do either discipline properly. Someone who knows half of two courses or, worse, a sixth of six subjects, is something I am not happy with. If you want to train a really good mechatronic, you need five years for each individual discipline. So, all together it takes about forty years and he can retire. That’s no good. Instead, we have to teach them to do something together with several people. That is the challenge. And you do not learn that from a formal mechatronics education.’

‘The biggest danger is that when you have done that education, you think you can do everything. You have seen many things, but you don’t speak any language really well. You cannot really get a complete mechatronic system off the ground on your own,’ says Van Eijk, who emphasizes that such a mechatronics program can attract pretty good people, but that it seems more sensible to everyone to become trained in their own field first. ‘In a company, a graduate in mechatronics will first be asked to develop expertise in one area. The baggage he carries will probably bear fruit in the long term, but first he has to gain more knowledge in mechanics or electronics. Only then can he play a valuable role in a mechatronic environment.’

This article is an adaptation of the interview of Jan van Eijk by Alexander Pil that appeared earlier in Mechatronics & Machinebouw.

 This article is written by Alexander Pil, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.