North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship Theses Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2011 Customizing And Building The Linux Kernel To Control Appliance Actuators And Sensors In Domotics Steven M. Hannah North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digital.library.ncat.edu/theses Recommended Citation Hannah, Steven M., "Customizing And Building The Linux Kernel To Control Appliance Actuators And Sensors In Domotics" (2011). Theses. 23. https://digital.library.ncat.edu/theses/23 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CUSTOMIZING AND BUILDING THE LINUX KERNEL TO CONTROL APPLIANCE ACTUATORS AND SENSORS IN DOMOTICS by Steven M. Hannah A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering Major: Electrical Engineering Major Professor: Dr. Christopher Doss North Carolina A&T State University Greensboro, North Carolina 2011 School of Graduate Studies North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University This is to certify that the Master’s Thesis of Steven M. Hannah has met the thesis requirements of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Greensboro, North Carolina 2011 Approved by: ___________________________ ___________ Dr. Christopher Doss Dr. Corey Graves Major Professor Committee Member _______________________ _____________ Dr. Alvernon Walker Dr. John Kelly Committee Member Department Chairperson ___________________________________ Dr. Sanjiv Sarin Interim Dean of Graduate Studies ii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Steven M. Hannah was born on June 27th, 1986 in Richmond Virginia. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in May of 2009. He is a currently a candidate for the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. He has presented research and had publications in the conferences including the 2007 and 2008 Opt-Ed Alliance day in Greensboro, North Carolina, NCUR conference 22 in Salisbury, Maryland, and the 2009 FCCM IEEE Symposium in San Francisco, California. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank my advisor Dr. Christopher Doss and my committee members Dr. Corey Graves and Dr. Alvernon Walker for keeping me focused and motivating me when I thought all was lost. I would also like to thank my family for their everlasting and undying love and support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................................x ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUTCION .......................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2. THE HUMAN POPULATION ...................................................................4 2.1 The U.S. Population ................................................................................................5 2.2 The World Population .............................................................................................6 2.3 Average Life Expectancies .....................................................................................6 2.4 Reasons for Improved Human Life .........................................................................8 2.5 The Senior Population .............................................................................................9 2.6 People With Disabilities .......................................................................................10 2.7 Current Options for the Disabled ..........................................................................11 2.8 A Possible Alternative in the Future .....................................................................12 CHAPTER 3. SMART HOUSE TECHNOLOGY ...........................................................13 CHAPTER 4. THE SAAD PROJECT ..............................................................................16 4.1 Overview ...............................................................................................................16 v 4.2 WireAct .................................................................................................................20 CHAPTER 5. HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF LINUX ..............................................22 5.1 History ...................................................................................................................22 5.2 Overview ...............................................................................................................23 CHAPTER 6. FIELD PROGRAMMABLE GATE ARRAYS (FPGAs) .........................27 6.1 History ...................................................................................................................27 6.2 Overview ...............................................................................................................28 6.3 The FPGA of Choice ............................................................................................32 CHAPTER 7. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP .......................................................................33 7.1 The Virtual Computer ...........................................................................................33 7.2 The Default Linux Kernel .....................................................................................40 CHAPTER 8. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ..................................................................45 8.1 Creating a New Project to Run the Linux Kernel .................................................45 8.2 Customizing the Linux Kernel ..............................................................................51 CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION .........................................................................................63 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................65 APPENDIX A ...................................................................................................................69 APPENDIX B ...................................................................................................................70 vi APPENDIX C ...................................................................................................................73 APPENDIX D ...................................................................................................................76 APPENDIX E ...................................................................................................................77 APPENDIX F ...................................................................................................................78 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. World Population Growth Throughout History .................................................5 Figure 2. U.S. Average Life Expectancy (1900 – 1997) ...................................................7 Figure 3. Top Ten Countries With the Oldest Populations ...............................................10 Figure 4. Physical Layout of SAAD System ....................................................................18 Figure 5. Basic Linux Directory Structure ........................................................................24 Figure 6. Basic FPGA structure ........................................................................................29 Figure 7. FPGA Configurable Logic Block (CLB) ..........................................................30 Figure 8. Input/Output Block (IOB) structure ..................................................................30 Figure 9. VirtualBox Startup Window ..............................................................................34 Figure 10. “Create New Virtual Machine” Wizard: Welcome Page ................................35 Figure 11. “Create New Virtual Machine” Wizard: Memory Page ..................................36 Figure 12. “Create New Virtual Disk” Wizard: Welcome Page .......................................38 Figure 13. “Create New Virtual Disk” Wizard: Virtual Disk Location and Size Page ....38 Figure 14. VM Storage Settings Page ...............................................................................39 Figure 15. Contents of /media/cdrom Directory in Linux Terminal .................................42 Figure 16. Contents of Linux Tree in Linux Terminal .....................................................44 viii Figure 17. Linux Kernel Running in HyperTerminal .......................................................46 Figure 18. XPS Project System Assembly View ..............................................................47 Figure 19. XPS Software Platform Settings Page .............................................................49 Figure 20. XPS Software Platform Settings “OS and Lib Configuration Page with Complete Settings .............................................................................................................50 Figure 21. “hellothere” C file