Real Time Control on Firewire

The goal of this project is to get insight into the use of Firewire as a field bus for real-time control. A characterization of Firewire's asynchronous transmission has been made by testing the point-to-point roundtrip in a 3-node Firewire network.\ud The results show Firewire's asynchronous transmission between 2 PC/104 stacks, using FCP (Functional Control Protocol) as the way of implementing, can transfer data in an average latency between 100¿s and 140μs, depending on the data payload. The maximum variation in this latency is 20μs.\ud During this project, it is also found that while the payload is increased, the roundtrip time does not show a significant increase: it rises only around 40μs from 1byte payload to 449 bytes payload. So the bus is used most efficiently when the packet is fully loaded. To get a complete insight of Firewire, it is recommended to implement Firewire¿s isochronous transmission and examine its applicability for real-time control also. And to use Firewire as a field bus in a real distributed control system with a plant is also advised to get a better understanding of Firewire

An investigation into the use of IEEE 1394 for audio and control data distribution in music studio environments

This thesis investigates the feasibility of using a new digital interconnection technology, the IEEE-1394 High Performance Serial Bus, for audio and control data distribution in local and remote music recording studio environments. Current methods for connecting studio devices are described, and the need for a new digital interconnection technology explained. It is shown how this new interconnection technology and developing protocol standards make provision for multi-channel audio and control data distribution, routing, copyright protection, and device synchronisation. Feasibility is demonstrated by the implementation of a custom hardware and software solution. Remote music studio connectivity is considered, and the emerging standards and technologies for connecting future music studio utilising this new technology are discussed.Microsoft WordAdobe Acrobat 9.46 Paper Capture Plug-i

High speed end-to-end connection management in a bridged IEEE 1394 network of professional audio devices

A number of companies have developed a variety of network approaches to the transfer of audio and MIDI data. By doing this, they have addressed the configuration complications that were present when using direct patching for analogue audio, digital audio, word clock, and control connections. Along with their approaches, controlling software, usually running on a PC, is used to set up and manage audio routings from the outputs to the inputs of devices. However one of the advantages of direct patching is the conceptual simplicity it provides for a user in connecting plugs of devices, the ability to connect from the host plug of one device to the host plug of another. The connection management or routing applications of the current audio networks do not allow for such a capability, and instead employ what is referred to as a two-step approach to connection management. This two-step approach requires that devices be first configured at the transport layer of the network for input and output routings, after which the transmit and receive plugs of devices are manually configured to transmit or receive data. From a user’s point of view, it is desirable for the connection management or audio routing applications of the current audio networks to be able to establish routings directly between the host plugs of devices, and not the audio channels exposed by a network’s transport, as is currently the case. The main goal of this work has been to retain the conceptual simplicity of point-to-point connection management within digital audio networks, while gaining all the benefits that digital audio networking can offer