[About]
[Project Site]
[Documentation]
[Download]
[FAQ]
[Forums]
[Guestbook] [Mailing List]

WELCOME!!
To the home site of the Real Time Controls Laboratory (RTiC-Lab), a Hard Real Time Controller Implementation and Simulation Environment for Linux

GENERAL INFORMATION

The Real Time Controls Laboratory, or RTiC-Lab (pronounced Arctic-Lab), is a semi-detached open source software designed to run on Linux and Real Time Linux. It is designed as an easy to use controls prototyping tool. It gives the controls engineer real time access to:

  • plant states,
  • plant I/O,
  • controller states,
  • controller parameters (scalar or matrix), and
  • hard real time environment for plant modeling
Run time data can currently be saved/displayed into:
  • stdout,
  • disk,
  • RTiC-Scope, a standalone Oscilloscope Emulator (see screenshots)
  • any standalone application written by the user. Communication between the user's program and RTiC-Lab is handled by RTiC-Lab's new API (see manual).
Most importantly, RTiC-Lab is intended to be extensible by creating a simple to use interface in Linux so that users can add their own modules. RTiC-Lab is released under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (GPL), which means that if you don't like some of the features that are already put into the code, then you may tailor the code to your needs.

Main author: Edgar F. Hilton, but programmers, artists, and general volunteers are always welcome!

AVAILABLE CARD DRIVERS

As of the latest release, RTiC-Lab has drivers for the following A/D cards:

  • Computer Boards, DAS 1401/12
and D/A cards:
  • Computer Boards, CIO-DDA06
  • Computer Boards, PCI-DDA08/12
and due to the easy card interface, users are encouraged to add more to these lists. Jose Guilberto of the New Mexico Institute of Technology has written a set of drivers that make the necessary I/O calls to COMEDI. Consequently, all COMEDI drivers will work with RTiC-Lab.
APPLICATIONS AND SCREENSHOTS
The following are some known applications of RTiC-Lab:

A development picture of RTiC-Lab can be seen here using the fvwm2 window manager. The following are some example screenshots of the parameter update windows from the above projects:

Contact Edgar F. Hilton