Book Image

Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers

By : Brian Amos
Book Image

Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers

By: Brian Amos

Overview of this book

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is used to develop systems that respond to events within strict timelines. Real-time embedded systems have applications in various industries, from automotive and aerospace through to laboratory test equipment and consumer electronics. These systems provide consistent and reliable timing and are designed to run without intervention for years. This microcontrollers book starts by introducing you to the concept of RTOS and compares some other alternative methods for achieving real-time performance. Once you've understood the fundamentals, such as tasks, queues, mutexes, and semaphores, you'll learn what to look for when selecting a microcontroller and development environment. By working through examples that use an STM32F7 Nucleo board, the STM32CubeIDE, and SEGGER debug tools, including SEGGER J-Link, Ozone, and SystemView, you'll gain an understanding of preemptive scheduling policies and task communication. The book will then help you develop highly efficient low-level drivers and analyze their real-time performance and CPU utilization. Finally, you'll cover tips for troubleshooting and be able to take your new-found skills to the next level. By the end of this book, you'll have built on your embedded system skills and will be able to create real-time systems using microcontrollers and FreeRTOS.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction and RTOS Concepts
5
Section 2: Toolchain Setup
9
Section 3: RTOS Application Examples
13
Section 4: Advanced RTOS Techniques

To get the most out of this book

Every effort has been made to make working through the examples in this book as easy as possible for a very wide range of people. To get the most out of the book (by working through the examples), you'll need the following hardware:

  • A Windows, macOS, or Linux PC with internet access
  • An STM32 Nucleo-F767ZI development board
  • Two Micro-USB cables
  • Jumper wires—20 to 22 AWG (~0.65 mm) solid core wire

Detailed setup instructions for the different tools used are included in the chapters.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Since this book targets programming low-level embedded systems, we'll be using C as the language of choice. Some knowledge of microcontrollers is assumed, as is the ability to read a datasheet. If you have a good understanding of the C language (or C++), then you should be comfortable reading this book – no previous RTOS knowledge is required. Since we'll be working with MCUs in an embedded system, there will be some occasional discussions on the hardware side as well, primarily dealing with features of MCUs and development boards. These topics will be covered in enough detail that someone with minimal hardware knowledge should be able to follow without too much difficulty. You should be comfortable interacting with and handling development hardware, although there isn't any actual assembly required.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-RTOS-with-Microcontrollers. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

  1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
  2. Select the Support tab.
  3. Click on Code Downloads.
  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

  • WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
  • Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
  • 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-RTOS-with-Microcontrollers. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "func1() is responsible for reading the value of a sensor and storing it in
the sensorReadings array"

A block of code is set as follows:

void func1( int16_t calOffset)
{
int16_t tempValue;
tempValue = readSensor();
tempValue = tempValue + calOffset;
sensorReadings[0] = tempValue;
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

/* ADC Config */
hnucleo_Adc.Instance = NUCLEO_ADCx;
/* (ClockPrescaler must not exceed 36MHz) */
hnucleo_Adc.Init.ClockPrescaler = ADC_CLOCKPRESCALER_PCLK_DIV4;
hnucleo_Adc.Init.Resolution = ADC_RESOLUTION12b;
hnucleo_Adc.Init.DataAlign = ADC_DATAALIGN_RIGHT;
hnucleo_Adc.Init.ContinuousConvMode = DISABLE;
hnucleo_Adc.Init.DiscontinuousConvMode = DISABLE;

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.