automated test systems

The first building automation system ATS was involved in was the reverse engineering of an old distributed system based on 8 and 16 bit processors. The company, this work was carried out for, was the leading building automation company in the Sydney area. It also had offices in South-East Asia and was opening offices in the States. However the building cycle at the time caused the company to reduce it's overall presence resulting in the loss of staff numbers as well as staff expertise.

Our role was to reverse engineer the old product range and move the systems forward. This was especially difficult as not only were sections of the source missing but the original compilers were also unavailable as they were no longer supported. This reverse engineering task was not just for the software but for the hardware as well. Specialized equipment was designed and built for various projects but some of these designs had also gone missing.

The first stage was to carry out an audit of the state of the systems and attempt to build a complete system from scratch.

To some extent this was successful although ATS had to rely on libraries and object code that we couldn't reproduce. There was also the issue of artefacts. Were specific events bugs in the system that had never been corrected or were there mistakes in our attempt to build a working system.

The way forward once this initial system was constructed was to:

• determine what tools were needed that were no longer available and replace them.
• recode those area where we didn't have the source code.
• map out the circuits of those boards that we didn't have full hardware designs.
• redesign those pieces of hardware that had end of life problems.

This reverse engineering of this system was successful in that a complete system could be built from the documentation, both hardware and software. This then allowed us to formally and stringently test the various components and systems.
This project was successful to the point where the testing of a system was being carried out. However this division of the company was put up for sale and thus resources, except for maintenance and support, were reassigned.

This system consisted of a main x86 controlling node connected to intelligent subsystems through Ethernet, RS485 and various serial excommunication protocols. Each of the intelligent sub-systems were designed to operate independently of the main controlling node whenever communications was lost.

ATS also picked up the production and manufacturing section as well.