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When Appliances Revolt
conaone writes "From the "disconcerting" file, Baseline has a weird story about how the increase in use of embedded operating systems is causing strange things to happen to consumer products. Their example is the use of Windows CE in the BMW 745i, which apparently occasionally goes nuts. The best is the list of video clips showing off the possessed car."
In an attempt to sidestep the "Windows + (vehicle) = crash LOLOL!!!!111!!one" line of comments, which I'm sure there will be many of, I'd like to ask why you need an "embedded operating system" to begin with.
What is so preferable to this approach than more traditional imbedded computer systems? Does the functionality of the system really outweigh the overhead of an entire OS/computer system? Are they really doing anything a halfway decent microcontroller unit can't handle?
Maybe the developers are just too lazy to build their systems "from scratch" like they used to. I personally can't see the benefit of using an embedded OS. What am I missing?
=Smidge=
I've developed under Windows CE, Windows, Palm, Unix, and 8052 microcontrollers. For reliability I would choose those "platforms" in reverse order. And, yes, development tools, memory optimization, and watchdogs are available for all of them.
OS's are generally for when a single piece of hardware is going to have to do many different tasks. Maybe one user will use it to listen to music, another to burn CDs, another to develop software, another to surf the Internet, etc. Parts inside washing machines and cars, however, are not going to see such variable usage. A washing machine is always going to wash utensils. A car is always going to drive down the road. These are not applications that really require an OS. Some good firmware is all you need.
Using microcontrollers in cars is not new. They've been doing it for over a decade. Only now, when you start contaminating things with OS's such as CE, do you really see a problem.