Month: November 2018

Shanghai, Testing MagLev

November 21, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 0 Comments

So I returned to Shanghai after only 10 days at home… Again a long flight but this time I was more lucky… I had obtained a cheap (well cheap… let’s jst say not so expensive) business class flight. Always good to sleep on the flight east. This time my route was different, first from the best to the worst airport in the World (my regular readers know exactly what I mean) and then a direct flight to Shanghai. Not with KLM/Air France but with China Eastern. Is not bad, and the chair was good so I actually slept good. That really helps.

Hotel “near” the airport

My hotel was booked and was allegedly close to the airport. I was picked up by a hotel shuttle. Indeed an old small bus arrived that picked me up and drove for 45 minutes to the hotel. Driver and security guy (??) were smoking heavily and driving like a maniac.
But I survived and arrived at the hotel around 11 in the morning.
That was no problem apparently, I got my room and decided to immediately get some sleep. Well no problem… getting the room and making myself understandable was a problem. Nobody spoke English. Not a single word…. They all used their phones where they spoke something Chinese and then the phone would display the English text. Sounds good but “Basic how you do brush rooms” was not really comprehensible.
Luckily I had somebody in China that I could call (I still had my Chinese SIM card (See: Shanghai AUTOSAR) So after a few phone calls my room was ready. A very weird room, there was a window but very high and that only showed a hallway… But I was tired so I went to sleep for 2 hours.

MagLev

So the hotel was pretty far from the airport. Checking the map showed me that it was pretty far from everything… Shanghai is big. Seriously big… So the shortest and definitively fastest way to go to town was to use the MagLev (Magnetic Levitation) Train from the airport. I could use the hotel shuttle to get there (When it drove…) or a Taxi. (I managed to get WeChat running and Didi, Chinese Uber, so I could easily take a cab.
From the Airport you’d have to walk a bit but between the 2 terminals was the train station where the MagLev would launch….
What is MagLev? Well, it is the German “Magnetschwebebahn” the magnetic glider train. The tracks are supercooled magnets that lift the train and also cause it to move forward. Brilliant concept. Uses a lot of power unfortunately. In Germany a very heavy accident happened on the test track (not far from my home in the Netherlands) and then the project was topped but China has bought the technology.
It is really a pity that the concept is not used more often. The 32 kilometer from the airport to the city took me about 6 minutes. Imagine that Munich… traveling to the city in less than 10 minutes instead of sitting in a crappy S-Bahn for over an hour….
The train travels with a top speed of 430 km/h. Unfortunately they did not always reach that speed, most of the time they limit that (due to power reasons I think) to 330 km/h. Still breathtakingly fast but not 430.

Testing

In Shanghai I visited the office of my friends at BTC, from test Conductor, and also the MagLev made me think about testing.
Of course driving around with 430 km/h requires a lot of safety relateed software which also requires a lot of testing.
For those who use Rhapsody but have never heard of TestConductor: shame on you! Test Conductor is a fantastic add-on to Rhapsody that helps you to setup your testing inside of Rhapsody. It uses Sequence Diagrams to create test-cases (But you can also create your own using code, Sequence Diagrams aor Flow-charts) and to run the tests.
You can automatically create test-architecture, create tests and run them. The tests, the results and more is stored in your Rhapsody Model includeing references to the tested elements.

TestConductor can cooperate with the Willert Target Debugger to let your tests run on your target! It can also create coverage reports, for model, code and requirements!
It is really very easy to use, you will find a thorough manual and a very well structured getting Started in your Rhapsody Directory “Samples” (Next to the Share directory) Check under Csamples and CppSamples to find the TestConductor directory. In there is the “Testing Cookbook” which tells you exactly how it works!

Interested? Ask me for a test license

That’s it, have fun testing with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

Shanghai AUTOSAR

November 10, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 1 Comment

Traveling

Last year the 10th AOC was in San Jose, this year the 11th was just as far but then in the other direction… in Shanghai

Also a first time, I’ve never been to China before. before we left there was already a bit of bad news: The Hard-Rock cafe in Shanghai just closed. Grrr.

Also acquiring a Visa was a bit troublesome… but I managed in time.

But OK, we had to work anyway. So on Sunday, me and a colleague left for Schiphol Airpor (My Favorite) to fly to Xiamen and then to Shanghai. Almost 16 hours in total. The first flight took 10 1/2 hours, that is long… Somehow I did not manage to sleep so I was pretty tired after arrival.

Luckily the arrival was in the evening so after a shower and a meal we could quickly go to bed. Before that we managed to get some SIM cards so that we could be online in an affordable way. Also we tried an ATM and that worked! China uses

But soon we noticed that not everything is easy in China. Almost everything is blocked, Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp and even Pokémon (Yes, yes….) Even many commercial VPN services don’t work.

Luckily I have my own VPN at home so I could have some communication with the home front. But it is definitely not as easy as we are used to now. And slow. And you get kicked out every now and then.

So if you travel to China:

* buy a SIM card from China Mobile (costs about €20 for a Month unlimited data)

* Optionally take a second cel phone (Or a WiFi 4G Router)

* Organize a VPN

* Download WeChat. Without WeChat you are lost in China. It is their WhatsApp and Facebook and ApplePay.

* If you go to China longer: go to ICBC and organize a Bank Account. You can link that to WeChat and use it to pay. They not always accept you as a customer but just try another one.

* No Uber but China has DiDi, get that!

The Conference

The Conference was 2 days, the first was a technical day with 2 parallel slots, one for Classic and one for Adaptive. My colleague and I decided to split up, I would do the Classic track, he the Adaptive.

It turned out to be the most interesting day, the next day was much more superficially from an information standpoint. At night was the networking reception, that is always very useful.

I changed my opinion about Adaptive AUTOSAR. My usual comment was: “Adaptive is like teenager sex, they all speak about it but nobody know how it works and nobody has done it”. I thought the use would be limited to infotainment and autonomous driving ECUs.

But I noticed that there is a trend towards centralization, like in the IT world. Nota bad idea, you create lots of intelligent sensors and actors and connect them to a powerful system that can control them.

Since most ECU’s are not “stand-alone” anyway but have to share tons of information with other ECU’s it is a good idea to combine all these systems.

Since the “intelligent” sensors and actuators will be still made with Classic AUTOSAR, there must be an AUTOSAR Classic inside the Adaptive.

We also learned a lot of other things like the communication (SOME/IP) and DDS, a systemwide publisher Subscriber (A bit like Da Boston Broker )

Back Home

It was a short visit, on Thursday we went back the same way we came. We got lucky, a free upgrade to Economy Plus. Unfortunately a large family (I think from one of the countries that used to be Yugoslavia) thought it was a good idea to put the entire family in Economy Plus, including their noisy kids. But we returned home safely!

I will be back in Shanghai in 2 weeks for the MESCONF.

That was it

happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

GroundHague day

November 2, 2018 / rhapsody207 / 2 Comments

Yes, I know, it is originally called Groundhog Day and not GroundHague Day.
And it is officially the 2nd of February and not October 31, I know.
But I had the feeling I was reliving the same day over and over again in The Hague and that reminded of one of my favorite movies.

A couple of years ago I had something similar when I needed a Visa for India. On the first Day I went there it turned out I had not enough information. So I had to return the next day (with the same information) and then after a few hours wait I got my badly needed Visa. Just in Time, the next day was my flight…

This time I needed a China Visa. At the beginning of this year I also needed an India Visa but India had now finally reached the 21st century and switched to eVisa. So the internet and a credit card payment sufficed.

Not so for China. I could send in all information by mail but that would mean I would have to send my passport as well. That would mean I would be without passport for more than 2 weeks. That is not an option with my normal travel schedule. I found out, however, that I can have a second passport just for this reason. Good for next time.

Since I have to be there not only for the 11th AUTOSAR Open Conference but also for the MESCONF, my German colleagues offered to take care of the Visa. But that turned out to be impossible. I am still Dutch and I still live I the Netherlands.

So I used the Public Holiday in Germany to go to the China Visa Office in The Hague. By train, I am not going to drive in my country, takes ages, no parking place and a lot of stress.
The Visa Office was not, as I assumed, in the Chinese Embassy, but there is a (commercial!) office that controls the visa process. The real visa is, of course, issued by the embassy, but the process around it is handled by a third party.

It went a lot quicker than the India one, a short 5 minute wait and it was my turn. So confidence increased. Unfortunately the papers I brought were not sufficient. For Germany they were but not for the Netherlands. They did not accept any document that was not in either Chinese or English (so not the German documents I had) and they needed more documentation from China.
Now another tiny problem was that China was also already closed (They are 7 hours ahead of us) so no chance to getting the needed documents
(I needed an official document from the Commerce Chamber of China that the company I was visiting really existed….) …
So…return the next day, Phil…

The next day I had all info covered. I woke up at 4 to have more time with China, I had already mailed the list I needed the night before, received everything I needed, printed it all together with a new application form and I now hoped it was OK. So back to The Hague with the train.
And… it was, they accepted the application and I received a paper that I needed to collect my passport 6 days later…. Now that was not an option (I had to fly 2 days later)
Luckily they had an emergency procedure. But China does not work fast, they need a full day (And that is the urgent where they left you bleed for, financially that is, €200 ,-)
So… return the next day, Phil…

So the next day I went to The Hague again, now it took only 10 minutes but than I had my passport back with a fresh China Visa. The groundhog did not see his shadow and the winter was over… back home and the time can continue.

Is there any Rhapsody news? Yes there is!!! We have a new promotion movie. Called “single source of Truth”, it is very very nice.

Managing complexity, managing resources, achieving goals: Successful projects in embedded systems / software engineering need powerful, coordinated procedures, tools and competencies. The single source of truth principle is an important element in the context of model-driven engineering.

You can find it on:

Willert Website, YouTube, Vimeo

So… that’s it. Blogging in China is not easy. The Chinese government does not like google, WhatsApp, YouTube and a lot of other sites where we normally work with. So don’t be mad if you don’t see much of me next weeks.

Happy Modeling with Rhapsody!