March 2014
State of the Community
Lacey Rae Trebaol, Engineer + Community Manager
Have you visited the RTI Blog lately? You should -- the entire site has undergone a massive overhaul and we’re posting more technical content than ever. In the past month we’ve covered a range of topics, including:
Really, the list keeps growing and we have no intention of letting that stop. If there are any topics you’d like to see us talk about on the RTI Blog, post a comment in the forum to let us know.
Speaking of new stuff: Have you ever used Performance Test? Connext DDS 5.1 contains powerful new auto-tuning capabilities that dynamically balance latency and throughput as system conditions such as update rates and network capacity change. With the " -enableAutoThrottle" and "-enableTurboMode" command line options, you can see how these new features perform on your hardware and network. Hop on over to Community Downloads and try it today!
RITSI Conference Activities
Javier Povedano,Software Engineer
At RTI, we know that the students of today are the engineers of tomorrow. This is why RTI loves to get involved with many kind of university events and activities, such as our University Program or the ETSIIT Technical Challenge.
RTI recently stepped in as a golden sponsor for the “V Congreso RITSI”, a conference that will be held in Cordoba, Spain, on March 28. This event is organized by students for students and researchers visiting from universities all around Spain, as well as many important IT companies. Presentation at the conference are organized in 3 different tracks: artificial intelligence, robotics and mobile communications.
Of course, our presentations will cover Connext DDS, a technology that provides the core nervous system for M2M communications in many IoT applications. We’ll also talk about our RTI University Program, which gives students the opportunity to work with DDS (free of charge!) as they pursue their thesis or research projects.
Come visit if you can. And if you’re interested in our University Program, reach out to us on the forum.
We need YOU! (or at Least Your Feedback)
Antonio Sanchez,Software Engineer
At RTI, we like to make our users’ lives easier. We are committed to finding simple solutions and reducing complexity. Connext DDS 5.1, our latest release, represents an improvement in usability with features such as built-in QoS profiles, XML-App creation, Prototyper with Lua, auto-throttle and many more!
If you have more ideas to make our software more usable, join our community and tell us. We encourage you to give us your feedback, we will take it into consideration for future releases!.
Case + Code Tackles Factory Automation
Rose Wahlin,Principal Software Engineer
Our newest use case shows you how to use Connext DDS to build systems that monitor and update the state of an object as it goes through any workflow. In discrete manufacturing process flows, this allows you to create a system that controls a batch or lot as it is processed by one or more control applications, updating the lot states as they are processed. We’ve developed a simple set of use cases that support a Manufacturing Execution System design that can manage the simple dispatching of lots, monitoring of current lot states and detecting and reporting errors throughout the system. If you’re interested, check out our Case + Code for Factory Automation.
Featured Download: RTI Connext DDS Performance Test
Fernando Garcia Aranda, Software Engineer
We just released an update to the RTI Connext DDS Performance Test on our Community Site. The RTI Connext DDS Performance Test measures what is sometimes called "loaded latency"—latency at a given throughput level. It can help you answer questions such as:
- For a given publishing configuration (e.g., queue size, batching settings), sample size, and subscribing configuration (e.g., queue size, Listener vs. WaitSet) what is the throughput of my network?
- When my network is heavily loaded, what latency can I expect?
- For a given configuration, what is the best-case latency with no other traffic on the network?
You will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool in the RTI Connext DDS Performance Test Getting Started Guide. There’s also a free eLearning video "Measuring Performance Using PerfTest."
Forum News
Gerardo Pardo, CTO
Configuring DDS to use multiple NIC interfaces? This may sound obscure, but we’ve discovered it is a topic of interest to many users. A HOWTO describing how the NIC configuration works in RTI Connext DDS was uploaded mid December and within 2 weeks it had over 600 views! Thanks go to Howard for the great writeup.
Are you writing adapters for RTI Routing Service? Do you use Java for this? Do you want to debug them using Eclipse? If you answered yes to all these questions you are clearly not alone! The HOWTO Develop Java RTI Routing Service Adapters using Eclipse contributed by Rip early December gathered 1500 views in the first 3 weeks!
Want to develop your very own cloud monitoring service? Check out the nifty open source Cave Canem project. Cave Canem uses RTI Connext DDS to monitor the status of a distributed set of computers in the cloud. It features a plugin architecture so that new sensors can be easily added. It even includes plugins to interface with Snort and perform intrusion detection. There is a thread in the forum on building Cave Canem where you can find hints on how to make the Cave Canem source build if you’re using the latest version of RTI Connext DDS.
We're Hiring!
Jan Van Bruaene, VP Engineering
The next wave of the Internet will connect machines and devices together into functioning, intelligent systems. The Internet of Things is growing dramatically as devices take advantage of the expanding speed, quality and affordability of networks. RTI leads the market for the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications that drive this wave. Our software platform allows machines to communicate efficiently, with high performance and with a large number of other machines. You can get a taste of our huge reach in applications here: http://www.rti.com/industries/customers.html. We are looking for talented software engineers to join the team building the core platform. We’re also looking for engineers interested in secure middleware. Take a look at the opportunities and apply today!
