May 2020 - STAR-Dundee

Second Generation of SpaceWire PXI Products Released

28 May 2020

STAR-Dundee’s SpaceWire PXI platform has now been updated to include a number of enhancements to single point of failure FMECA (Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis) protection. The SpaceWire PXI Mk2 range of products now supersedes the original SpaceWire PXI products, offering all the features present in the original products and full backwards compatibility.

At STAR-Dundee we continually work to improve our products. When these improvements are to software or to a device’s firmware, we make these updates available through our website’s Product Support section. You can gain access to these downloads by registering your product. When the update is to the hardware, we endeavour to ensure backwards compatibility with previous generations of the product. We indicate the version number of a product using the mark designation system, abbreviated to Mk. For example, the SpaceWire PXI Mk2 (Mark Two) is the second generation of our SpaceWire PXI product range.

The SpaceWire PXI Mk2 is available in the following variants:

SpaceWire PXI Interface Mk2 4HP
SpaceWire PXI Interface Mk2 8HP
SpaceWire PXI Interface Mk2 with RMAP Target 4HP
SpaceWire PXI Interface Mk2 with RMAP Target 8HP
SpaceWire PXI Router Mk2

The SpaceWire PXI Mk2 products can be used in cPCI or PXI backplanes, provide link speeds of up to 400 Mbit/s and, as with our other interface and router products, are accessed using our STAR-System software suite. The 8HP variants of the PXI Interface Mk2 and PXI Interface Mk2 with RMAP Target have 4 general purpose bi-directional triggers on the front panel which can be used to sequence events such as the transmission of time-codes or data packets, or to indicate events to an external device such as an oscilloscope. A full FMECA guide for the SpaceWire PXI Mk2 boards is available on request.

STAR-Dundee COVID-19 Update

07 May 2020

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic requiring significant changes to our daily lives, we are striving to maintain productivity while protecting our employees. We are following the guidance of our governments in the UK and Spain, both to ensure the safety of our employees at STAR-Dundee and STAR-Barcelona, and to help minimise the spread of the virus.

The health and safety of our employees is our primary concern and the majority of our team are now working from home. Our homeworking engineers have all of the equipment they need to provide support but, in some cases, this may take slightly longer than normal.

We are continuing to work on our innovative research and development contracts and the development of new products as best we can, and have recently announced several new and forthcoming products. These include the SpaceWire Link Analyser Mk3, SpaceWire EGSE Mk2, SpaceFibre Interface FMC Board and STAR-Ultra PCIe. We expect to announce some more new products in the coming weeks.

There is a small team working in our office in Dundee, primarily focussed on fulfilling orders. We are grateful to our manufacturers and suppliers who are continuing to deliver to us. Our order fulfilment team is endeavouring to keep customers informed of likely delivery dates and ensure orders are delivered on time.

Everyone at STAR-Dundee would like to extend our best wishes to you all during these challenging times. We hope you are all safe and well.

SpaceWire System Validation using the SpaceWire Recorder Mk2

06 May 2020

In order to validate and debug complete SpaceWire systems it is very useful to be able to record and view the traffic on multiple links. Thorough validation can also require very large quantities of SpaceWire traffic to be stored and analysed.

The SpaceWire Recorder Mk2 can record and display the SpaceWire traffic on up to four SpaceWire links. It records SpaceWire packets, time-codes and link errors to solid-state disk, along with time information, and then displays these in network and packet level views ready to be inspected. The quantity of data that can be recorded and viewed is limited only by the size of the solid-state disks used (960 GB).

Recording statistics provide a summary of recording contents and help highlight any concerns. Built-in search helps to validate and navigate recorded traffic. To help automate SpaceWire traffic validation, all or part of a recording can be exported to CSV formatted files and then easily interpreted by custom software.

More information about the SpaceWire Recorder Mk2 is available on the product page.