Konstanz, 09th July 2017. An increase in global deployments while situations have become increasingly hazardous demands that vehicle systems function perfectly on a constant basis. For the IT systems integrated within the vehicles, this leads to high demands in terms of availability, reliability and viability. As a result, consistent and comprehensive life cycle support is becoming increasingly important in the field of repair and maintenance. It is particularly important in this regard for troops to be supported by simple and intuitively operated software tools in order to ensure that the vehicles can be driven and operated in theatre situations.
ATM ComputerSysteme GmbH (ATM) offers software solutions to support operators, administrators and maintenance engineers for each of these applications, whether the vehicle is in operational use, on camp standby or undergoing maintenance.
SysMon: functional monitoring of operational readiness
Online functional monitoring ensures that the IT equipment in military land vehicles is primed and ready for use. And this is exactly where the ATM tool SysMon comes in. SysMon detects potential malfunctions even during operation and monitors the system states of the integrated IT components, connected peripherals, management equipment, network components and other set-up-specific devices. Mission-critical malfunctions and system errors are logged by SysMon and displayed to the operator together with additional information regarding expected operational limitations and possible compensation operations. The front-end application “System Status Monitor” allows the operator to retrieve the most important environmental parameters evaluated by the tool, such as temperature, voltages and software or firmware status of the monitored IT components. SysMon also provides a defined software interface to which external applications can be connected, such as those required for vehicle-specific test systems.
Rescue System: tool for ensuring operational readiness
The Rescue System is an independent and bootable software system for securing and restoring the operational system partition. With the rescue system, an administrator can back up an installed and configured system. The backup takes place in a separate partition that the operational system cannot use. In the case of a boot problem caused, for example, by an uncontrolled voltage drop, the user can restore the system partition by restoring the defined basic software system.
DIANA: diagnostic application for fault localisation
The testing software DIANA allows extensive fault localisation in IT equipment sets of military vehicles and cabs and supports efficient repair and maintenance service (IHS2). DIANA enables fundamental functional testing of the installed IT components and guarantees targeted fault localisation down to LAE level. The components are even inspected while still installed. Illustrated test instructions guide maintenance engineers through the test interactively, allowing them to carry out both an overall test and a specific individual test. The test sessions can be saved, exported and imported at any time and the test results can be saved in a test report. DIANA uses the cross-functional testing software SysCheck to monitor IT computers.
SysCheck: cross-functional tool for fault localisation
ATM’s program SysCheck is a testing software for fault localisation in the KommServer, CENTURION, VistaMaster and even third party hardware device families. SysCheck enables the repairer to perform a hardware test using testing software and testing equipment. SysCheck monitors for short-circuits and line breaks in different hardware platforms, integrated components, interfaces, connected peripherals and data cables as well as end devices (such as the SEM 93 radio) while they are still installed.
SysCheck is available as an integrated variant (such as KommServer) on the Linux operating system, or as a live version via LAN boot or USB boot (such as CENTURION) on other operating systems. SysCheck itself runs on the test object and is operated remotely via a web browser. Together with the DIANA diagnostic application, SysCheck forms an integrated concept for fault diagnosis and maintenance for a complete vehicle system test.
Admin tools: consistent administration of computer systems
With a view to supporting system administrators, ATM provides admin tools: a series of applications which guarantee that all computer systems are managed in the same way across the entire troop. The admin tools include programs for software installation, software and firmware updates, backup creation, and the management, backup and recovery of disk images. All that is required for this is a network connection, meaning that the administration of the computer systems is possible while they are still installed in vehicles. The admin tools run on the Linux operating system and are available from both the “Check equipment for Command and control tools STF” and in the “Admin equipment for JFST”.