The NetBSD Toaster

kv9 writes "Finally after many, many yeas of running on everything-but-your-toaster NetBSD is there too. Technologic Systems has made a toaster that is controlled by NetBSD and powered by one of their ARM boards, the TS-7200. Everything is controlled through sysctl, there are LEDs that show you what is going on, the toaster can play MP3s while it fries the bread and even has Apache/PHP installed. More information in the press release [pdf warning] and on this running NetBSD on the TS-7200 page."

Comments

Can it burn CDs?

[Se7enLC]

Can it burn CDs^W^W^W toast?

Re:Can it burn CDs?

[NemosomeN]

Can toast?
No, toast can't run BSD.

Yeah, but...

[Ledneh]

I'll bet it makes lousy toast. You know, the kind with BCBs all over the place.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Ledneh]

Sorry, for the interested, that's "Burnt Crunchy Bits." From Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant.

Re:Yeah, but...

[iamdrscience]

I'll bet it makes lousy toast. You know, the kind with BCBs all over the place.

Before someone replies to the parent saying that he spelled PCB wrong, he didn't. He was talking about BCBs, "Blackened/Burnt Circuit Boards", an obvious result from putting a computer in a toaster.

BCBs can also result from using special components such as LERs (Light Emitting Resistors) and SEDs (Smoke Emitting Diodes).

Re:Yeah, but...

[wf_john]

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. What do you think this is?" he asked. One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a 4-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from white to black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16 element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. By next week, I can show you a working prototype." The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand morecapabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years." "With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes." "The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs." "Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too." "We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v. 8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook." "Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. A 1 GHz Intel Pentium IV with 256 MB of memory, a 6 GB hard disk, and a Flat Panel monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multi-tasking, object-oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a 4-bit microcontroller!" The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.

So...

[Knight Thrasher]

If it crashes, does your toast get burnt?

The BTOD? Black Toast of Death?

Re:So...

[cvk]

Yes, actually! I'm Christian von Kleist and I'm with The NetBSD Foundation, manning the booth at LinuxWorld SF '05 and operating our sweet, sweet toaster demo. The script that does the toasting is /usr/local/bin/toast (seriously). Scripts interface with the toaster device drivers (the burner relay, the buttons, the LED bank, the toastiness knob, and the relay that turns on the latch electromagnet) through sysctl.

Pictures I took: http://wickedways.org/articles/linuxworld2005/

Here's what's available to a script from sysctl:

# sysctl -a | grep hw.t
hw.toaster0.led0_duty = 1 hw.toaster0.led0_width = 8
hw.toaster0.led1_duty = 2 hw.toaster0.led1_width = 16
hw.toaster0.led2_duty = 4 hw.toaster0.led2_width = 32
hw.toaster0.led3_duty = 8 hw.toaster0.led3_width = 64
hw.toaster0.magnetic_latch = 0 hw.toaster0.burner_element = 0
hw.toastersensors0.burnlevel_knob = 1593 hw.toastersensors0.cancel_key = 0 hw.toastersensors0.cancel_key_ticks = 13 hw.toastersensors0.toast_key = 0
hw.toastersensors0.toast_key_ticks = 4 hw.toastersensors0.bagel_key = 0
hw.toastersensors0.bagel_key_ticks = 6
hw.toastersensors0.warm_key = 0 hw.toastersensors0.warm_key_ticks = 7 hw.toastersensors0.frozen_key = 0 hw.toastersensors0.frozen_key_ticks = 10 hw.toastersensors0.toast_down = 0 hw.toastersensors0.toast_down_ticks = 50965 hw.tspld0.board_temp = 40250000 hw.tspld0.board_temp_5s = 40290128
hw.tspld0.board_temp_30s = 40477805

(The board_temp are the temperature in C, multiplied by 10^6, so right now it's at 40.25 degrees C.) /usr/local/bin/toast is pretty complicated, but a basic toast script works like this:

#! /bin/sh
sysctl -w hw.toaster0.magnetic_latch=1
# user presses toast lever down now...
sysctl -w hw.toaster0.burner_element = 1
sleep 60
sysctl -w hw.toaster0.burner_element = 0
sysctl -w hw.toaster0.magnetic_latch=0
echo "Toast is done!"

Only root has write access to hw.toaster0.burner_element! :D

The real script uses trap to prevent the sleep line from being interrupted, since that could result in a fire!

Just FYI:
# dmesg
NetBSD 3.0_BETA (TS7200) #57: Mon Aug 8 00:34:41 MST 2005
joff@sayan.wifi.home:/home/joff/NetBSD-toaster/obj /sys/arch/evbarm/compi
le/TS7200
total memory = 32768 KB
avail memory = 28196 KB
mainbus0 (root)
cpu0 at mainbus0: ARM920T rev 0 (ARM9TDMI core)
cpu0: DC enabled IC enabled WB enabled EABT
cpu0: 16KB/32B 64-way Instruction cache
cpu0: 16KB/32B 64-way write-back-locking-A Data cache
epsoc0 at mainbus0: Cirrus Logic EP93xx SoC rev E0
epsoc0: fclk 200.03 Mhz hclk 100.01 Mhz pclk 50.01 Mhz
ohci0 at epsoc0 addr 0x80020000-0x80020fff intr 56
epclk0 at epsoc0 addr 0x80810000-0x8081008f intr 35
epe0 at epsoc0 addr 0x80010000-0x8001ffff intr 39
epe0: MAC address 00:d0:69:4f:af:76
ukphy0 at epe0 phy 1: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface
ukphy0: OUI 0x0010a1, model 0x0021, rev. 9
ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
epcom0 at epsoc0 addr 0x808c0000-0x808c0fff intr 52
epcom1 at epsoc0 addr 0x808d0000-0x808d0fff intr 54
epcom1: console
ohci0: OHCI version 1.0
usb0 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0
uhub0: Cirrus Logic OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
tspld0 at mainbus0: Technologic Systems TS-7200 rev C, features 0x1
tspld0: jumpers 0x7
tspld0: board temperature 21.93 degC (71.48 degF)
isa0 at tspld0: PC/104 expansion bus
tsdio0 at isa0 port 0x100-0x107: Technologic Systems TS-DIO24
toasterlcd0 at tsdio0: 4x40 text-mode hd44780 LCD
toasterlcd0: using port C, bits 0-7 as DB0-DB7
toasterlcd0: using port B, bits 0-3 as RS, WR, EN1, EN2
wsdisplay0 at toasterlcd0 kbdmux 1
wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0
toaster0 at ts

Trademark infringement?

[Anonymous Coward]

will Roxios Toast sue wonderbread for trademark infrigement now?

Server

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess their server is toast.

Wait, this story confuses me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little confused by this story.

Did Netcraft just confirm that my toaster is dead?

Talkie Toaster ( red dwarf reference )

[Phil246]

How long before we get a proper talkie toaster then
like this :)

Re:Talkie Toaster ( red dwarf reference )

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on the executables installed in /usr/bun

I don't think so....

[jericho4.0]

This might be appropriate for a single guy on a budget, but we all know that scaling problems will keep this from being deployed in any serious environment.

Re:I don't think so....

[dr_dank]

If you had a beowulf cluster of these, you could toast a whole loaf at once!

Re:Oh man, a toaster?!

[Chosen Reject]

This guy already found a way to watch ESPN in peace

Myth

[keesh]

It's a myth that NetBSD runs on more than Linux. See gregkh's writeup.

Re:Myth

[nacturation]

From the writeup:

"Comparing that list to the list of NetBSD ports it is now evident that Linux has been ported to more platforms than NetBSD.

[...]

Which just goes to show how flexible Linux is..."

Um, no it doesn't go to show that there are more ports because of its flexibility. No doubt Linux is flexible, but so is NetBSD (some have argued more so). The reason that Linux has more ports is because there are more people doing porting.

Re:Myth

[Just Some Guy]

They both list quite a few ports, but the trick is in deciding which list is actually longer. If you count complete hardware platforms, then it looks like NetBSD might take the lead since, in my opinion, just booting the Linux kernel doesn't really qualify as "running Linux". That's a point that has to be decided, though. On the other hand, if you count CPU architectures instead, then Linux might be ahead. That depends on how loosely you aggregate similar chips - for example, is "Intel IA32-compatibles (Cyrix MediaGX, STMicroelectronics STPC, ZF Micro ZFx86)", listed under "Diverse PDA / embedded / microcontroller / router devices", really different than "Intel IA32 family"?

My point is that it's not entirely clear which OS supports more platforms, since "supports" and "platforms" are both variables that would need to be nailed down before the conversation even begins. My own first impression is that NetBSD is still the winner, since you can actually boot into each of its listed platforms, install software from pkgsrc, and generally treat them as equals except for the obvious performance differences. Others could effectively argue the opposite, I'm sure.

"The UNIX T SERVER!!!"

[Camon_Draconis]

"Shh shh shh, not right now son. Im making *PZZZTTT* toast!!!!"

Re:Already Dead

[leonardluen]

"...it fries the bread and even has Apache/PHP installed."

that will teach them to run their webserver on a toaster!

second slice of toast

[Phroggy]

What I want to know is, if I finish toasting one slice of bread, and then immediately decide I want to toast another, will it reset and toast the second slice for the correct amount of time, instead of popping up way too early like most toasters do? Of course it would have to take into account that the toaster is already hot, and not toast it for quite as long as the first slice (since it would have taken a little time to warm up at first).

Re:second slice of toast

[PakProtector]

Since my roommate, who was at LinuxWorld with the NetBSD team, and actually got to use the Toaster and run the Toaster Demos, got back a little under 4 hours ago, I can answer your question.

The Toast will always cook for the correct time. The mechanism that 'drops' the basket the toast is in is held there by sleep, not by a monitor of the temperature of basket, or by some flimsy piece two metals sandwiched together that heat at different rates.

It is a fine device.

on the scale of Nerds <----> Matters

[bugnuts]

News for Nerds <--------> Stuff that Matters

I'd put this solidly on the "Nerds" side.

Red Dwarf nostalgia

[urikkiru]

'Hi, would you like some toast?'

Re:Red Dwarf nostalgia

[Destoo]

LISTER: Look, _I_ don't want any toast, and _he_ (indicating KRYTEN) doesn't want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast.
Not now, not ever. NO TOAST.

TOASTER: How 'bout a muffin?

LISTER: OR muffins! OR muffins!
We don't LIKE muffins around here!
We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and DEFINITELY no smegging flapjacks! .(slight pause)
.
.
.
TOASTER: Aah, so you're a waffle man!

As always

[iamdrscience]

This just proves how ahead of its time Amiga was. The Video Toaster came out in 1990. Now, 15 years later, someone finally puts another system on a toaster and it doesn't even have video! Maybe another 15 and the world will catch up.

2005 is...

[crimson_alligator]

...the year of BSD on the countertop!

If only...

[MiddleHitter]

Now, if only NetBSD ran a garbage-disposal, we could say that NetBSD runs everything and the kitchen sink!

Re:If only...

[dodobh]

It runs Emacs.

Intellitoast

[carambola5]

Finally! My dreams have come true!

The World Needs More Toast Tech

[bloodmusic]

I'd like to see this extended to a combined toaster/jelly-jet printer. Delicious toast printed to order with the image of your choice. Of course it would require a bread feeder that could do cut slice or continuous loaf.

Dave Lister had one 3 million years from now

[davidwr]

Th is one talked.

The obligatory question

[HishamMuhammad]

But... do they fly?

Re:The obligatory question

[zjbs14]

Yes, but Flying Toasters was a Mac-only thing long before it was a Windows thing. Also, written by Berkeley Systems. Coincidence?

Re:Already Dead

[kv9]

TFA salvaged from MoFos cache:

It has long been regarded that the UNIX-like OS NetBSD is portable to every type of machine except perhaps your kitchen toaster. Technologic Systems, however, has conquered this last frontier. Using one of its rugged embedded TS-7200 single-board computers housed inside the empty space of a standard 2 slice toaster, Technologic Systems has designed a functional NetBSD controlled toaster.

The toaster on display now in the NetBSD booth at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, is as high-tech as they come. This toaster features a 4 line LCD, USB keyboard, 10/100 ethernet port and a RS232 serial port for the external console. The toaster's internal circuit boards have been bypassed and routed through the CPU board allowing NetBSD complete control over the toaster's features. A keyboard connects through a USB port on the side of the toaster and the 4x40 LCD displays a NetBSD/toaster login prompt. The burner element is also controlled by the TS-7200 via an internal relay. Unlike previous NetBSD toasters which were nothing more than a glorified PC case-mod, this toaster can actually toast bread!

NetBSD was ported to the toaster by Jesse Off (an engineer at Technologic Systems). When asked details about the week-long effort, he replied, "NetBSD is well laid out for this type of embedded application development. I was most worried about physical things such as fitting the hardware inside the case and the board being able to survive 60 seconds at a time a half centimeter away from an 800 watt burner element. A regular PC can't even survive room temperature without heatsinks and fans, and the TS-7200 has neither." The end-design has no thermal issues and will not let the user toast if things start getting close to the temperature margins of the internal components measured by the onboard temperature sensor.

When asked what he thinks of the NetBSD operating system, Off replied, "Well, I'm skewed. I have been a small-time NetBSD developer on and off the last 4 years. NetBSD's single no-frills high quality source tree is a great starting point for bringing up an embedded application. The API's have a great power-to-complexity ratio and are coded with great wisdom as well as great intellect. For NetBSD though, being wiser is definitely the greater virtue."

When asked what the point of this exercise was, company president Bob Miller chuckled and had this to say: "Well, we're definitely not planning on going into full production with this. The idea was to follow through on a process most of our customers are using everyday in their own embedded designs using our boards. Though customers are not likely using toasters in their designs, they are likely encountering many of of the same issues such as GPIO control of hardware, custom software design/modification and dealing with tight spaces and high temperatures."

So what exactly is inside this toaster for a computer to read/control? For one, there is a small magnetic latch that holds your toast down against the spring action after you press down. To engage that latch, one needs to know when the user is pressing the bread into the toaster which the TS-7200 reads with another sensor. There is a browning level knob (a potentiometer) which the TS-7200 reads with an analog converter input. The front panel also contains 4 bright red LEDs and 5 push-buttons which appear to the system as a 5-key keyboard. The NetBSD LCD driver presents a standard VT100 text mode console that both the USB keyboard and 5-key front-panel are connected.

All peripherals had NetBSD drivers w

Re:Already Dead

[Scarblac]

In fact, that's how it works. Insert bread, start webserver, advertize its existence on Slashdot. Resulting meltdown turns bread into toast.

Re:Oh man, a toaster?!

[saintp]

But does that claw hammer run BSD?

Re:Warning?

[op12]

Moving the plugins into the optional folder creates dramatic speedup in start time. See here

More pics

[ThatComputerGuy]

Pics here, since the other stuff doesn't seem to be loading. Taken at LW SF on Wednesday.

(If it isn't all there yet, give it a few minutes to upload.)

Not enough...

[Espectr0]

...until someone implements RFC 2324 - Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)

Re:Oh man, a toaster?!

[dsginter]

Have they made one of these chips yet to control your wife?

Yep

Re:Already Dead

[timonak]

Actually, according to Jessie Off (or was it Eddie Dawydiuk) from Technologic Systems, there website does indeed run on a TS-7200. Which works quiet well to serve there site, except when the slashdot hoards hit.

I'm glad I viewed the write up last night. . .

Ok, I give up.

[bluephone]

Back in high school, '92 I think, a friend and I created a serial toaster. I did the hardware and he did up the controlling software that even had a door for our BBS. From ToasTerm, with pretty ANSI graphics and everything, you could select the toast level, "push" the lever to turn it on, see a little timer for how much longer was left, and then "see" the toast pop up. The toaster hooked to a serial port, the brown-o-meter was controlled with a stepper motor froma floppy drive, and the up/down lever was a pair of servo motors.

If you looked carefully in the door program, there was an easter egg that would launch the toast out of the toaster. I rigged a solenoid to fire against the handle, and the toast would fly a good 5 feet. When this eventually shattered the plastic handle, so we replaced that with a steel bolt so it wouldn't break.

Eventually the controller board did manage to catch fire. But ToasTerm was still a hit on the BBS so we left it on without the Serial Toaster still connected.

This beats the shit out of our toaster.

Status of site

[timonak]

This is from an email from Jessie Off on the TS-7200 mailing list: We don't have the bandwidth for that so our web site is pretty much down right now. FWIW, we're not being limited by the TS-7200 CPU or RAM. Only 2% of the CPU is actually being utilized currently. I have Apache configured for up to 30 maximum simultaneous connections (of which all 30 are full) and we're satisfying about 10 page loads per second. We also got linked from http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25321 which has been generating a lot of hits all morning so we weren't really in a position to receive the "slashdot effect" //Jesse Off

Apache in a toaster?

[kjots]

Great. So now I can worry about a Denial-of-Breakfast attack.

Just kidding folks :P

omg!

[Francis85]

Now with mod_bagel and mod_frozen !! oh my!