Gain the practical skills and insights you need to supercharge your embedded engineering journey by working with over 20 example programs

Key Features

• Understand and master RTOS concepts using the powerful STM32 platform
• Strengthen your embedded programming skills for real-world applications
• Explore advanced RTOS techniques to unlock innovative embedded solutions
• All formats include a free PDF and an invitation to the Embedded System Professionals community

Book Description

This updated edition of Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers is packed with cutting-edge content to help you expand your skills and stay ahead of the curve with embedded systems development. Written by senior engineers with decades of experience in cybersecurity, operating systems (OSs), and embedded systems, it covers the role of real-time OSs in today’s time-critical applications and FreeRTOS with its key capabilities and APIs. You’ll find a detailed overview of system design (memory management); project-design (MCU, IDE, and RTOS APIs); hands-on system use; as well as the system platform, dev-board with an MCU and debug-probe, and development tools (IDE, build system, and source-code debugging).

This second edition teaches you how to implement over 20 real-world embedded applications with the latest FreeRTOS features and how to optimize your code with dynamic analysis. The chapters include example programs on GitHub with detailed instructions. You’ll create and install your own FreeRTOS system on the dev-board and set up an IDE project with debugging tools. With dozens of reference manuals listed, you’ll always have ample resources for system development.

By the end of this book, you’ll have the hands-on skills to design, build, and optimize embedded applications using FreeRTOS, development boards, and modern debugging tools.

What you will learn

• Understand RTOS, use-cases, and decide when to (and not to) use real-time OS
• Utilize FreeRTOS scheduler to create, start, and monitor task states
• Improve task signaling and communication using queues, semaphores, and mutexes
• Streamline task data transfer with queues and notifications
• Upgrade peripheral communication via UART, USB, and DMA by using drivers and ISRs
• Enhance interface architecture with a command queue for optimized system control
• Maximize FreeRTOS memory management with trade-off insights

Who this book is for

This book is for systems programmers, embedded systems engineers, and software developers who want to learn about real-time operating systems (RTOS) and how to use FreeRTOS in their embedded system design. A basic understanding of the C programming language, embedded systems, and microcontrollers is assumed. The book also includes hardware tutorials for systems programmers.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Real-Time Systems
2. Introducing the Development Board
3. Introducing the Development Tools
4. Understanding Super-Loops
5. Implementing the Super-Loop
6. Understanding RTOS Tasks
7. Running the FreeRTOS Scheduler
8. Protecting Data and Synchronizing Tasks
9. Intertask Communication
10. Drivers and ISRs
11. More Efficient Drivers and ISRs
12. Sharing Hardware Peripherals among Tasks
13. Creating Loose Coupling with Queues
14. FreeRTOS Memory Management
15. Multi-Processor and Multi-Core Systems
16. Troubleshooting Tips and Next Steps
17. Appendix A - Quick-Reference for the Development-Tools
18. Appendix B - Bibliography for System Reference-Documents
19. Appendix C - Creating FreeRTOS-Projects, and Installing FreeRTOS