From clean socks to secure transactions, QNX brings it all to Embedded World

Every year, QNX Software Systems exhibits at the Embedded World conference in Nuremburg. And every year, we like to mix things up and do something different. For instance, in years past, we have showcased a robotic vacuum, a heart defibrillator, a pipeline inspection system, an Oscar-winning flying camera, a programmable logic controller, and a control panel for bulldozers — all running on the QNX Neutrino OS.

What have we got lined up this year? Plenty, as it turns out. Once again, our booth will feature several QNX-based products, including:

• An innovative double-drum washing machine that cleans two loads of laundry simultaneously — finally, you can wash lights and darks at the same time!
• A Modular Train Control System (MTCS) from MEN Mikro Elektronik that complies with the EN 50155 functional safety standard and is based on the QNX OS for Safety
• A hardware security module from Worldline that protects secret keys and performs high-speed cryptographic operations for secure data transactions
• A traffic-light controller from SWARCO that helps improve traffic flow and optimizes the use of existing road infrastructure — learn more about this system in this morning’s press release

It’s hard to imagine four systems that could be more different. And yet, the developers of these systems all chose the same OS — a testament to the “bend it, shape it, any way you want it” quality of QNX technology. Not to mention its performance and reliability.

The Bluetooth connection
Of course, we can’t show up at Europe’s biggest embedded systems conference without bringing something new for embedded developers. And so, this year, we are demonstrating the QNX SDK for Bluetooth Connectivity, a new middleware solution for medical devices, industrial automation systems, consumer appliances, and other embedded system applications.

Designed for flexibility, the SDK offers a dual-mode Bluetooth Smart Ready stack that supports classic Bluetooth connectivity as well as connectivity to Bluetooth Low Energy devices. It also supports a comprehensive set of pre-integrated Bluetooth profiles, including the classic PAN, SPP, HDP, HID, FTP, and OPP profiles, as well as the BAS, FMP, HRP, HOGP, and PXP Low Energy profiles. Here’s the SDK at a glance:

For developers of infusion pumps, vital-sign monitors, and other medical devices, the SDK includes an IEEE 11073 Personal Health Data stack certified by the Continua Health Alliance. This stack enables easy interoperability with pulse oximeters, weight scales, and other Bluetooth-enabled peripherals, and addresses the growing demand for health devices that can wirelessly collect patient data, either at home or in a clinical setting.

Of course, the proof of the Bluetooth pudding is in the pairing. So we've also built a demo that shows how the SDK can help developers build vital-sign monitors and other connected embedded systems. The demo system can discover and pair with Bluetooth classic and Bluetooth Low Energy devices, render their data onto a touchscreen display based on Qt 5, and provide a history of heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and other vitals:

A screen capture of the Bluetooth-powered QNX medical demo

Read the press release and product-overview page to learn more about the new QNX SDK for Bluetooth Connectivity.

And if you are Nuremberg this week, drop by and see us! We’re in Hall 4, Booth 534.

QNX boards the bus: an automated fare collection system from MSI Global

You can find QNX technology in almost every form of transportation imaginable, from cars and trains to boats and planes. It’s even used in motorcyles. If you download the infographic, “35 Ways QNX Touches Our Lives,” you’ll find lots of examples, including in-car infotainment, locomotive control, and cruise-ship navigation. But here’s the thing: the infographic doesn’t say a thing about buses. Not a single mention.

Enter an announcement that fills the gap. Earlier today, QNX revealed that the QNX Neutrino OS is powering an automated fare collection system used throughout Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. The system comprises automatic gates, ticketing machines, and yes, onboard bus equipment, including a console for the driver and a smartcard validation system for passengers. The system was created by MSI Global, an international system integrator specializing in land-transport solutions and a subsidiary of the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore.

Silvester Prakasam, head of the fare system business unit at MSI, has good things to say about QNX. “MSI’s experience with QNX Neutrino has been very favorable and we will continue to leverage the same secure OS for our future projects. Creating a solution that could gain widespread adoption was a key consideration in our choice of OS, and with QNX Neutrino we were able to create a design that is fast and reliable, yet affordable to customers in cost-sensitive regions.”

Read the press release to learn more. Meanwhile, I thought you would enjoy some images of the fare collection system, starting with the smartcard reader:



Here's an example of the ticketing machines:


And here's an example of the automatic gates:

Vector's software testing tools now support QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus

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This just in: Vector Software, a provider of software tools for testing safety-critical embedded applications, has announced that its VectorCast suite now supports QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus, an OS that combines the benefits of the QNX Neutrino RTOS Safe Kernel and the QNX Neutrino RTOS Secure Kernel.

According to the press release, the "The VectorCAST product suite has supported the QNX Neutrino RTOS since 2009... this latest integration helps our customers accelerate time-to-market by streamlining product planning, design, and validation."

QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus offers both IEC 61508 certification at Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3) and Common Criteria ISO/IEC 15408 certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+). Its certification credentials — combined with its microkernel architecture, POSIX-compliant API, and adaptive partitioning technology — make Certified Plus well-suited to systems that have both functional safety and security requirements.

To read Vector's press release, click here.
 

Tridium greens up with QNX

The folks at Boeing's largest manufacturing facility (over 1 million square feet) faced a challenge. On the one hand, they wanted to reduce the high energy costs of lighting such a huge area. But at the same time, they needed a solution that would maintain a safe working environment and provide flexible, easy-to-configure lighting zones.

To address this challenge, Boeing turned to Tridium, a global supplier of energy management and device-to-enterprise integration systems. Tridium's solution not only slashed power consumption — up to 30% during peak periods and up to 50% on weekends — but also provided real-time alarming and allowed operators to program the system remotely, from any web browser.

Boeing is one of many customers to benefit from Tridium's solutions, and for more than a decade, many of those solutions have run on the QNX OS. Case in point: The Tridium Niagara Framework, a software platform used in factories, schools, universities, and office buildings to control a host of applications, including energy management, building automation, security, lighting control, and convergence retailing. More than 250,000 instances of the Niagara Framework operate in 50 countries.

So why I mentioning all this? Because QNX and Tridium announced today that Tridium has optimized the latest version of its Niagara Framework, NiagaraAX 3.6, for the QNX Neutrino RTOS.

For details, read the press release. But in the meantime, check out this video, which describes what happens when you integrate various systems — HVAC, lighting, elevators, and so on — with the QNX-powered Niagara framework:


 

BlackBerry PlayBook becomes first tablet certified for U.S. government

This just in: RIM has revealed that the QNX-powered BlackBerry PlayBook has received FIPS 140-2 certification, making it the first tablet certified for deployment within U.S. federal government agencies.

According to the press release, the PlayBook is the only tablet to achieve FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) certification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is required under the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA).

Yes, I know, that's a lot of acronyms. But cool news, nonetheless!

For breaking coverage of this story, see the National Post, TheBerryFix, and CrackBerry.com.
 

OIS ports ORBexpress communications middleware to latest rev of QNX Neutrino OS

You may not know it, but the QNX Neutrino OS is used in a large number of software-defined radio (SDR) devices, such as this handheld military radio from Harris. A key QNX partner in the SDR market is Objective Interface Systems (OIS), who make ORBexpress, a high-performance, real-time implementation of CORBA technology optimized for embedded systems.

This week, OIS announced that ORBexpress now supports the latest rev of the QNX Neutrino RTOS on a variety of ARM, Power, and x86 processors, including both single-core and multi-core parts. For more on the announcement, read the press release.
 

Keeping it green with Kieback&Peter

Quick: What do the Reichstag in Berlin, the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and the Marble Palace in St. Petersburg have in common?

Give up? They all use the QNX OS. More specifically, they use QNX-based building management systems from Kieback&Peter.

For Kieback & Peter, downtime isn’t an option. They need to deliver systems that run 24/7, with no excuses. That requirement, among other things, spurred them to choose the QNX OS back in the early 1990s. Twenty years on, their enthusiam for QNX remains undiminished.

I've had only one opportunity to speak with Hans Symanczik, who heads up sales and marketing at Kieback&Peter, and it was a blast. He's a super-positive, enthusiastic guy, and he made the QNX video team feel at home the minute they arrived on his doorstep. So without further ado, let's roll the tape:


 

QNX updates EAL 4+ certified secure RTOS

This just in: QNX has announced an update to its QNX Neutrino RTOS Secure Kernel. The new version supports a greater variety of single-core and multi-core processors and boasts faster kernel performance in periods of heavy memory utilization. It also allows developers to take advantage of Persistent Publish/Subscribe (PPS) messaging, which I've discussed in previous posts (see here, here, and here).

Like its predecessor, the new version:

• offers certification to Common Criteria ISO/IEC 15408 Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+
• supports adaptive partitioning, an efficient form of time partitioning that prevents software processes from being starved of CPU cycles
• supports symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) on multi-core processors

Who is this product for? Primarily companies that build power plants, defense systems, subway control centers, government networks, and other mission-critical applications.

To find out more about the secure kernel, click here.
 

QNX unveils first RTOS to offer both safety and security certification

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that QNX always likes to make a big splash at the annual embedded world conference. Well, the big splash for this year is now public: QNX has taken the covers off the first RTOS product to provide both safety and security certification.

Yesterday, QNX announced QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus, which offers both IEC 61508 certification at Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3) and Common Criteria ISO/IEC 15408 certfication at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+).

The goal of this product is simple: To help developers of railway control systems, medical devices, automotive systems, wind turbines, and other mission-critical applications reduce the time and expense of certifying their end-products.

You see, safety and security certification at the system level can cost millions of dollars and take years to achieve. Using a pre-certified OS can help cut that cost and accelerate certification efforts. A few operating systems provide safety or security certification, but not both. QNX Neutrino RTOS Certified Plus is the first OS to fill this gap.

Whitepapers
Chris Hobbs, a kernel developer at QNX, has authored several papers on creating applications that meet rigorous reliability and functional safety requirements, including IEC 61508 SIL 3. For a list of these papers, see my previous blog post.
 

Rx for ACVA (Acute Computer Virus Anxiety)

Earlier this week, my computer got hit by a virus — and a nasty one at that.

Being the calm, collected person that I am, I immediately went ballistic. Which resulted in a Class A headache. Which degraded into neck spasms. Which made me crabby. Which made everyone around me crabby. Which made me even crabbier.

But here's the thing: Nothing could lift me out of my funk. And believe me, I tried everything: diazepam, muscle relaxants, jogging, jumping jacks, Jack Daniels, aromatherapy, massage therapy, music therapy, cognitive therapy, psychotherapy, Oprah, peyote, naturopaths, green tea, Ovaltine, Prozac, Muzak, Mongolian throat singing, transcendental meditation, mystical levitation — the whole nine yards. Nothing worked.

Finally, my IS department intervened. They handed me a tool that had proved efficacious in similar situations and encouraged me to engage in some, ahem, therapeutic behavior:



In case you're wondering, I feel much better now, thank you.

Top 25 programming errors - and how to avoid 'em

Earlier today, the SANS institute published a list of the 25 "most dangerous" programming errors. The language in the press release is a little overblown (for example, "Shockingly, most of these errors are not well understood by programmers"), no doubt to attract the attention of reporters looking for a juicing story. The good news is, the announcement isn't all marketing fluff. It also provides detailed information on how to identify and avoid all the errors listed.

For instance:

1. Click here to open the announcement, then scroll down to "CWE-20: Improper Input Validation."

2. Click on "MORE" to view a summary of the error, including consequences, ease of detection, remediation cost, etc.

3. Click on "CWE-20" at the top of the summary to see examples of the error in Java, C, PHP, etc.

To compile the list, SANS enlisted the help of experts from Symmantec, RedHat, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the University of California, and other organizations.

What about you? Do you think the list is on the money? Or do you think the experts missed some key vulnerabilities -- or perhaps overestimated others?