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German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

rheinmetall.github.io

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#21
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why the hate on DDS? seems like a perfect fit.

DDS is the least bad of the stuff that has come out of OMG, but it's not a nice middleware still. There is no underlying algebra of that composes nicely when compared to Zenoh for example, and the "vendor independence" and compatibility is usually a joke. There's a reason ROS is moving away from it again.

There's a standard that has OMG as the acronym? OMG. I'm not even going to bother to search for that!

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#22
post #7
post #6

Am I just too ignorant of Miltech, or is this that in large parts recreating Standard messaging primitives that other protocols and systems have been providing for decades already (so invented elsewhere?)

Every mil company designs unique bespoke things often with some exceptions, and even the "open systems" mostly aren't open by any stretch of the definition. Obscurity is part of the allure, not a repulsive factor. You don't want a hostile nation suddenly and easily understanding your systems.

I have to assume that so many people require access to the specs that an interested party can surely acquire them.

World of Tanks has repeatedly had military personnel updating the technical specifications with details they have found in the secret manuals.

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#23
Open the C++ example up and the first thing I see:

```cpp std::cout Generally, I've heard `std::endl` instead of \n has bad performance because it forces the statement to print immediately. And because cout is guaranteed to flush anyways when the program ends, you're adding a delay for no reason.

I wonder if there's something I'm not seeing that led to them adopting this rule. e.g. "abnormal program termination" caused by the weapon blowing itself up circumventing a buffer flush?

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#24

Reminds me a lot of the Tactical Microgrid Standard (aka TMS aka MIL-STD-3071) [1], probably just because TMS uses DDS as well. I would really like to know if there is a protocol that functions like DDS but caters to real-time guarantees and prioritizes (at a "simple protocol" level) usability on embedded systems with no dynamic memory allocation. It would also need to be just-as-functional with non-real-time systems…

Pretty sure there are DDS implementations that provide most of that, maybe with memory pools instead of no-allocations.

Other than that, PX4 uses an in-memory only pub/sub for internal data bus, somewhat inspired by DDS

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#25
post #21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDS is the least bad of the stuff that has come out of OMG, but it's not a nice middleware still. There is no underlying algebra of that composes nicely when compared to Zenoh for example, and the "vendor independence" and compatibility is usually a joke. There's a reason ROS is moving away from it again.

There's a standard that has OMG as the acronym? OMG. I'm not even going to bother to search for that!

Object Management Group I think. Better known as the inventors of UML.

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#26
post #23

Open the C++ example up and the first thing I see: ```cpp std::cout Generally, I've heard `std::endl` instead of \n has bad performance because it forces the statement to print immediately. And because cout is guaranteed to flush anyways when the program ends, you're adding a delay for no reason. I wonder if there's something I'm not seeing that led to them adopting this rule. e.g. "abnormal program termination" caus…

This seems like an incredibly unimportant quibble... I would imagine they just used std::endl b/c that's what most random tutorials used in the 2000s and that's how the engineer learned. If you are printing a debug string, you probably don't care that much about perf in the first place.

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#27
post #23

Open the C++ example up and the first thing I see: ```cpp std::cout Generally, I've heard `std::endl` instead of \n has bad performance because it forces the statement to print immediately. And because cout is guaranteed to flush anyways when the program ends, you're adding a delay for no reason. I wonder if there's something I'm not seeing that led to them adopting this rule. e.g. "abnormal program termination" caus…

For a long time, std::endl demonstrated that you were a proper C++ programmer, not some neckbeard C apologist. It wasn’t until C++ had „won“ that it became acceptable to use \n again.

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#28
“Hi Codex, please find attached website about the specification of my Battlesuit and use the documented API to create a plugin for Home Assistant that shows groups of sensor data.

You are only allowed to use commands that retrieve data, you are not allowed to perform actions on the suit.

Treat the suit like its API is not robust and in worse shape than a cheap toy: perform read calls slowly and sequentially with at least one minute in between.

If possible please group data in meaningful categories, just like the tank and radar dome.

My Home Assistant is the default on the local network, credentials are in credentials.txt.

Please send me a text when you’re done. Kthnxbye”

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#29
post #25
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a standard that has OMG as the acronym? OMG. I'm not even going to bother to search for that!

Object Management Group I think. Better known as the inventors of UML.

UML was phase two of OMG. It originally developed CORBA.

Re: German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol

#30
post #6

Am I just too ignorant of Miltech, or is this that in large parts recreating Standard messaging primitives that other protocols and systems have been providing for decades already (so invented elsewhere?)

DDS sort of took over from CORBA in the military domain, and the statically-typed IDL was still quite similar to CORBA last time I looked at it, so that takes you back to around 1998 when CORBA was being used a lot in the military in my experience. What other protocols and systems were you thinking of that can provide (depending on broker) hard-realtime delivery that can be used in safety-critical systems?

Stupid question, but why didn’t the DOD mandate IP compatibility for literally all comms like 20+ years ago? Is it pure corruption/incompetence or is there a good reason?
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