Zeroconf networking support eases device discovery and configuration

NUREMBERG, GERMANY -- February 26, 2013 -- eCosCentric Limited, the eCos and RedBoot experts, today announced the immediate availability of Bonjour conformant Zeroconf networking support for eCosPro. eCosPro-mDNS enables designers to sweep away layers of complexity that hide many products' features from their intended customers and end-users. The implementation allows installation, configuration and management of devices and services to be performed automatically when connected to a local area network. High-end audio devices will be the first products to reach the market utilising eCosPro-mDNS, and are scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2013.

"LAN-based devices have a reputation for complicated installation and configuration. eCosPro-mDNS neatly delivers on the promise of "plug and play" LAN device installations that enable you to provide the best user experience to your customers.", said Paul Beskeen, Director of Engineering at eCosCentric.

eCosPro-mDNS has been verified with Apple's Bonjour Conformance Test Suite as an mDNS Responder, ensuring interoperability with other Bonjour/Zeroconf compliant systems. As well as being based on IETF open standards, the system has also been tested against a wide range of DNS-SD clients including iOS, Android, Bonjour on Windows, Avahi on Linux and OS X.

Typically, eCosPro-mDNS adds around 14KiB of code space and uses 200 bytes of RAM (as measured on Cortex-M), making it a perfect solution for resource constrained SoC-based devices. eCosPro-mDNS provides a comprehensive server-side mDNS responder implementation. This provides the ability to dynamically manage a device's hostname and advertised services, as well as respond to DNS-SD requests. Static, IPv4LL link-local (auto-ip) and DHCP IP address assignment are all supported.

Delivered in tandem with the release is a comprehensive update of eCosCentric's productised version of the light weight IP stack (lwIP), which now ships as standard in the latest eCosPro releases. This lwIP update includes support for both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing schemes and is ideally suited to resource constrained systems that have minimal memory and limited processing power.

eCosCentric will demonstrate the simplicity of usage at live demos on their stand 5-143 at the Embedded World trade show in Nuremberg Germany from 26-28 of February. The demonstration system runs eCosPro on a TI-OMAP L138 (ARM9) reference board. It shows Android based phones connecting and browsing the services on the target which have been automatically advertised on the network with the use of eCosPro-mDNS. This mirrors a typical use-case scenario for Zeroconf enabled hardware being controlled via a WiFi attached handset or tablet.

eCosPro-mDNS is delivered in source form and is fully packaged as a standard eCos EPK module, for installation and tuning using eCos's administration and configuration tools. Comprehensive documentation is included, along with examples and test code to allow engineers to quickly integrate this feature into their designs.

About eCosPro

eCosPro is a stable, fully tested and supported version of the eCos open source real-time operating system and RedBoot bootstrap firmware. The eCosPro Developer's Kit is a distribution of eCosPro with commercial support & advice, prebuilt eCos host tools, compiler tool chains, full documentation, Eclipse-based integrated development environment to streamline eCos application development, C++ runtime (including Standard Template Library) as well as profiling, code coverage and memory allocation debugging tools. Middleware components qualified with eCosPro include a Java virtual machine, an in-memory database, graphical user interfaces, security libraries, CANopen and USB compliant host, device & OTG stacks and flash file-systems.

For further details visit http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecospro.shtml or contact eCosCentric.

About eCosCentric

Founded in April 2002, eCosCentric is the leading provider of eCos and RedBoot support, training, development and consulting services worldwide. Staffed by the original eCos creators and highly experienced embedded system and software engineers, eCosCentric provides complete solutions consisting of run-time systems, complementary host tools and certified third party applications.

eCos, eCosCentric and eCosPro are registered trademarks of eCosCentric Limited. Bonjour and OS X are registered trademark of Apple Inc. All other company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.