Amazon FreeRTOS Released for NXP, Texas Instruments, STMicro, and (soon) Microchip Microcontrollers

FreeRTOS is an open source real-time operating system for microcontrollers released under an MIT license, and when it comes to adoption in embedded systems it’s right there near the top with embedded Linux according to Aspencore 2017 embedded markets study. For example, some Espressif SDKs for ESP8266 or ESP32 are based on FreeRTOS, and so is Mediatek LinkIt Development Platform for RTOS.

The recently announced Amazon FreeRTOS (a:FreeRTOS) leverages the open source operating systems, and extends it with with libraries that enable local and AWS cloud connectivity, security, and soon over-the-air updates. a:FreeRTOS is free of charge, open source, and available today.

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In order to get started, you’ll have a choice of 4 hardware platforms:

  • STMicro STM32L4 Discovery Kit IoT Node (B-L475E-IOT01A) powered by STM32L475 ARM Cortex-M4 MCU with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, RF (868 / 915 MHz), and NFC connectivity, plenty of sensors
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  • Texas Instruments SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3220SF LaunchPad development kit (CC3220SF-LAUNCHXL) with  CC3220SF single-chip WiFi microcontroller (MCU) with 1MB Flash, 256KB of RAM.
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  • Microchip Curiosity PIC32MZ EF Development Board (Amazon FreeRTOS support coming soon) powered by PIC32MZ EF MCU (415 DMIPS) with 2 MB Flash, 512 KB RAM, integrated FPU, crypto accelerator, and connectivity via an on-board 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module, and two MikroBUS connector for add-on boards.
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If you don’t own any of those boards, or don’t plan to purchase one, but still would like to play with a:FreeRTOS you could run the Windows Simulator instead.

Once we’ve selected our hardware platform (or simulator), we can access Amazon FreeRTOS console to configure and download the FreeRTOS kernel and software libraries for our application.  Development of the application is done though the tools provided for the board for example TI Code Composer Studio, STM32 System Workbench, IAR Embedded Workbench, or Visual Studio Community Edition.

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Amazon FreeRTOS is free as in speech and free as in beer, with the source code and links to documentation available in Github. Amazon will make money when you utilize AWS services such as AWS IoT Core, data transfer, or AWS Greengrass. The price list of AWS services that may be charged (if enabled) while using Amazon FreeRTOS can be found here.

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bantoto masabo sigola
bantoto masabo sigola
6 years ago

FreeRTOS is pseudo open source
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/esp-open-rtos/D9_1KPt0y9U

dont really have the time to check if amazon’s rtos is really open or not

bantoto masabo sigola
bantoto masabo sigola
6 years ago

ohh ! very good news!

Drone
Drone
6 years ago

“Amazon FreeRTOS” – Really? That’s either a really badly named OS, or it’s an OS that will will spy on you all the time.

theguyuk
theguyuk
6 years ago

And these support Amazon Freertos, as reported on electronicsweekly.

IAR Systems embedded compilers now support the Amazon FreeRTOS.

iarTogether with Amazon Web Services (AWS), IAR Systems provides developers with easy access to high-performance, pre-integrated development tools for developing and debugging embedded and IoT-connected applications based on Amazon FreeRTOS.

Real Paul
6 years ago

> So maybe the concern expressed in that thread have been resolved.

With the switch to the MIT license, it’s definitely resolved.

Paul M
Paul M
6 years ago

I wonder how this OS compares with Zephyr ( https://www.zephyrproject.org/ ) which is backed by the Linux Foundation.

I had a play with a BBC:MicroBit and Zephyr, having seen Marcel Holtmann’s video using the microbit in a variety of interesting roles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZRbIpVJGns

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products