Flexibilis has partnered with Wind River, the developer of the VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS). VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems. It is employed for example in aerospace, automotive, robotics, medical devices and networking. VxWorks fulfills the next-generation requirements of Internet of Things (IoT). The advantage of a real-time OS is its quick and predictable response as well as low latency.

As our partner, Wind River supports Flexibilis’ software development. In turn, Flexibilis supports VxWorks to address the needs of a wide range of customers.

More about VxWorks: http://www.windriver.com/products/vxworks/

Flexibilis was in CIGRE Session 45. The event was organized in Paris, Palais des Congrès 25-29th August. CIGRE is an international event for professionals from the power industry. Flexibilis was at the UCA International Users Group booth, where we participated to the IEC 61850 interoperability demonstration. Flexibilis had three Altera Cyclone V FPGA boards and one Cyclone V SoC in the network, all with Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS).

Flexibilis Redundant Switch demonstration at UCAIug booth in CIGRE 2014

Version 2.8.1 of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) reference design was released recently. Thanks to the new improvements the overall cost for customer is now significantly less than before. The reference design doesn’t use an operating system anymore, which makes the software one third smaller. This means that the reference design fits to a smaller FPGA than before. The customer no more needs to license any OS.

If you don’t yet have the newest version, you can download it from here: https://www.flexibilis.com/products/downloads/

Flexibilis participated in an IEC 61850 and IEC 62439 technical interoperability testing. The test session was held in Bilbao, Spain, from 15th to 16th of July 2014.

The interoperability was tested between the devices of nine different companies: Flexibilis, Siemens Ruggedcom, General Electric, Schneider Electric, ZIV, NR Electric, OMICRON, System-on-Chip engineering (SoC-e) and Ingeteam Power Technology. Flexibilis tested FRS (Flexibilis Redundant Switch) and its HSR protocol and time synchronization IEEE 1588 features. Flexibilis devices operated greatly together with the devices of other vendors.

The purpose of the event was to prepare for CIGRE 2014, which will be held in Paris 25-29 August. The system pre-tested in Bilbao will be demonstrated at the UCA International Users Group booth. This time, there will be 21 companies participating, Flexibilis included.

Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) version 2.8 is now available for download. Here are some improvements we made for version 2.8:

• Support for IEEE 802.1X
• Support for port specific MAC table clearing
• Memory usage optimization

You can download the new version from the downloads page.

Flexibilis was chosen to Growth Track. It is a service offered jointly by Tekes, the Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, Finnvera, Finpro, Finnish Industry Investment Ltd and the Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH).

Growth Track is a service model for small and medium-sized enterprises that pursue rapid growth and internationalization. With Growth Track, companies can plan and implement their own development measures from a long perspective and with less effort by utilising public corporate services.

New version of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) is now available for download. This version 2.7 contains the following new features:

• Counter registers for supporting RMON Statistics
• Possibility to read the internal MAC Address Table

You can download the new version from the downloads page.

ORing Industrial Networking Corporation holds a seminar on 24th February 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany. It is just before the Embedded World 2014 event. In the seminar, ORing will release new products and present plans for 2014.

Flexibilis’ CTO Timo Koskiahde will participate to the seminar as a guest speaker. He will tell about HSR and PRP technologies. Please come to listen!

For everyone participating to the seminar there is also lunch served. Please register online for the seminar: http://www.oring-networking.com/event/list

The Smart Grid is a modern electric grid that uses many new technologies for collecting information, communication and control of the grid. The Smart Grid provides better efficiency and reliability, and it allows distributed generation of energy, making it easier to connect renewable but variable energy sources like solar power and wind power to the grid. The new technologies employed in the Smart Grid include High-Availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) and IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP), which are used in substations for internal communication and time synchronization of electrical measurements.

This article by Jouni Kujala explains the implementation of HSR and IEEE 1588 protocols using an Altera Cyclone V SoC.

Read the whole article on RTC Magazine: http://rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/103445

Version 2.6 of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) was released today. You can download the IP from the Altera website: http://www.altera.com/smartgrid

2.6 has new features for FRS, most notably support for Virtual LAN tagging (IEEE 802.1Q) as well as Altera Cyclone V GT board.

Evaluation instructions for Cyclone V GT and reference design for the new version are available on the Flexibilis site: https://www.flexibilis.com/products/downloads/