FreeRTOS Free Course

FreeRTOS the Real-Time Kernel

FreeRTOS is a small, yet powerful real-time operating system developed by Richard Barry and FreeRTOS Team and described in his book "Using the FreeRTOS Real-Time Kernel – a Practical Guide". The operating system is highly CPU independent and has been ported to numerous microprocessor platforms. The source code is available via this web site. It is distributed under the GPL with an optional exception. The exception permits users' proprietary code to remain closed source while maintaining the kernel itself as open source, thereby facilitating the use of FreeRTOS in proprietary applications.

FreeRTOS is designed to be small and simple. The kernel itself consists of only three or four C files. To make the code readable, easy to port, and maintainable, it is written mostly in C, but there are a few assembler functions included where needed (mostly in architecture specific scheduler routines). The download contains prepared configurations and demonstrations for every port and compiler, allowing rapid application design.

There are two forks of this OS; OpenRTOS and SafeRTOS. OpenRTOS, which has an identical code base to FreeRTOS but with different licensing. The OpenRTOS license removes all reference to the GPL and its implications. For example, one of the conditions of using FreeRTOS in a commercial product is that the user is made aware of the use of FreeRTOS and the source code must be provided upon request. OpenRTOS doesn't have this requirement. The other spin, SafeRTOS, is based on the FreeRTOS code base but has been updated, documented, tested and audited to enable its use in safety-critical products.

About the Free Course

The course scope is to teach students how to use FreeRTOS APIs. The course is based on V6.05. The course is organized in 8 modules. They are:

· Introduction to FreeRTOS

· Kernel Structure

· Task Management

· Queue Management

· Semaphore/Mutex Management

· Co-Routine Management

· Advanced Features

· FreeRTOS Porting

The labs for these modules are available based on the 80x86 industrial ports that use the open watcom compiler and ARM 7/Cortex that use the Keil compiler. Labs are only available commercially to our customers.

Feel free to post any comments, questions, ad feedback through the blog. I promise I will answer your post within 5 working days ISA.

This free course is for free use as long as the original copyright is reproduced. Feel free to spread, share, modify, or any other verb you can do with the material. Knowledge is every body's right just like air and water.

FreeRTOS GUI

After the course, I will publish a post on how to port an open source GUI for FreeRTOS. This post will help in demonstrating the power of FReeRTOS and how easily it can be extend with middleware. I have tested it only my PC. Work is currently on progress to test it on one of STM32 boards based on the ARM Cortex M3 processors.