MEL and LINC

MEL Managed Embedded Linux

MEL is a device management solution for Linux gadgets. Despite the countless technical advantages of embedded Linux it's a fact that end-users are deterred by the Linux command line interface. To overcome this many headless Linux devices use an embedded Webserver serving HTML based content, these are the so-called "browser based" interfaces. MEL proposes a slightly different approach: the Webserver is used just to launch a Java™/Swing Web Started rich client that allows:

Sophisticated graphical user interfaces with multiple windows and complex graphical diagrams.
Device pushed notifications for dynamic quasi real time views.
Low bandwidth, efficient, bidirectional RPC with compressed XML.
SSH secured file transfers between the device and user machine.
Painless cross-browser and cross-platform portability.

Typically the GUI main window is used for alarm management and a tree control shows the contained nodes. Some nodes can have their own application specific editor window, for example one editor for each card inside a subrack assembly. The control panel dialog gives access to the maintenance wizards: network configuration, firmware update, etc.

MEL Screen shots

Click on the thumb images to access the full-size screen shot gallery.

Alarm Mgmt.

Control Panel

Network config

Date & time

Firmware update

Configuration backup

MEL Technical overview

MEL Block diagram

Basically MEL is minimalist "Rool your own" Linux system that contains a tailored Linux kernel, LibC, Libstdc++, busybox, boa, SSHD and µLINCOD (LINC Object Daemon). µLINCOD is an object daemon with a containment hierarchy of C++ classes that act as "managed objects" each able to perform some sort of active work: e.g. implement a communication protocol or control a hardware device. These managed objects support an binding mechanism that allows external access to the exposed attributes and operations. The external access uses a SOAP based RPC protocol with binary XML compression on the wire; via this RPC mechanism its possible to connect the MEL devices to the management system (LINC) and to the local Java™ rich client.

LINC LInux Network Controller

LINC Concept

LINC is a Network Management Server that runs on affordable Linux® servers. The Java™ client consoles can be Web Started on any machine that has a Java™ 1.5.0 run-time, namely Windows™, Linux® or Apple OS/X™ computers. Using these consoles the operators are able to monitor and manage tens or hundreds of devices: MEL devices or other devices via built-in protocol proxies (see CWDM case study). LINC is build arround the same code base as MEL with a PostgreSQL database backend for object persistency.

Because this solution is based on open source, with no per server or per client licensing costs it's quite suited for cost sensitive, large volume, projects. If you are interested in this solution, please feel free to contact us.