Last July, Arduino announced plans to switch from the soon-to-be deprecated Arm Mbed to Zephyr RTOS, and the company has now outed the first beta release of “Arduino Core for Zephyr OS” for a range of boards. From the user’s perspective, this should not change anything. However, there are massive changes under the hood and Arduino sketches are built and executed differently with the Arduino Core for Zephyr. Some highlights of the new Zephyr-based Arduino core implementation include: Dynamic sketch loading – Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware. Zephyr subsystems support threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling. Fast compiling and smaller binaries since a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary. You can get started straightaway with the code and instructions on GitHub. You’ll need Arduino 2.x.x for this to work. [...]
ZephyrOS is an open-source, real-time operating system (RTOS) designed for low-power, resource-constrained devices. We are transitioning Arduino cores to ZephyrOS to ensure continued support and innovation for developers. This change follows ARM’s deprecation of MbedOS, which has historically powered some of our cores. By adopting ZephyrOS, we are introducing a more modern, scalable, and feature-rich RTOS that aligns with the evolving needs of the embedded development community. This ensures that Arduino users have access to a robust, actively maintained platform for creating advanced applications.
With this brand new beta program, we invite our community to explore, test, and contribute to this significant new development in Arduino’s evolution – one that will allow old and new Arduino users all around the world to continue using the language and libraries they know and love for many years to come.
What is ZephyrOS?
ZephyrOS is a state-of-the-art RTOS designed to enable advanced embedded systems. It is modular, scalable, and supports multiple hardware architectures, making it an excellent choice for the next generation of Arduino projects.
Flexibility: Customize and scale the system to your specific needs.
Extensibility: Benefit from a rich ecosystem of libraries and subsystems.
Community-driven innovation: Collaborate with a vibrant open-source community.
What’s new in this core?
The Arduino core for ZephyrOS brings significant changes to how Arduino sketches are built and executed. However, the integration between Arduino core and ZephyrOS operates seamlessly under the hood, providing advanced RTOS capabilities like real-time scheduling and multitasking, while keeping the development process as straightforward as ever. This means you can enjoy the best of both worlds: the ease of Arduino and the power of a modern, robust RTOS.
Dynamic sketch loading: Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware.
Zephyr subsystems: Leverage features like threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling.
Fast compiling: Since only a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary, compilation is faster and resulting binary files are smaller.
How to get started
Ready to dive into the future of Arduino development with ZephyrOS? Head over to our repository for comprehensive installation instructions, troubleshooting tips, and detailed technical documentation.
Contribute to the beta!
This is your opportunity to shape the future of Arduino development! We welcome feedback, bug reports, and contributions to the core. Visit the GitHub Issues page to report bugs or suggest features. Your feedback will play a critical role in refining this integration and unlocking new possibilities for embedded systems.
Visit theArduinoCore-Zephyr GitHub repository today and start exploring this exciting new platform! Thank you for being a part of the Arduino community.
NXP i.MX 94 is an octa-core Arm SoC with up to four Cortex-A55 application cores, two Arm Cortex-M33 real-time/functional safety cores, two Arm Cortex-M7 real-time/functional safety cores, and an NXP eIQ Neutron NPU designed for Edge AI industrial and automotive applications I initially thought it would be a cost-down version of the NXP i.MX 95, and while it shares many of the same features, it’s more an application-specific processor designed specifically for industrial and automotive applications, lacking a 3D GPU, camera input interfaces, a MIPI DSI display interface, and 10GbE networking, but increasing the number of real-time cores (at the cost of application cores) and adding several networking features such as an Ethernet time-sensitive networking (TSN) switch, 2.5GbE interface, an Ethercat controller, and support for industrial protocols like Profinet or OPC-UA FX. NXP i.MX 94 specifications: CPU Up to 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores 2x Arm Corex-M7 cores, one for functional [...]
MicroPython has become one of the most popular ways of programming microcontrollers, and the just-released MicroPython v1.24 adds support for the widely-used Raspberry Pi RP2350 and Espresif ESP32-C6 microcontrollers and a range of other changes. Those include improved RISC-V support with native code generation, an updated Zephyr v3.7.0 RTOS with threading support, unified TinyUSB bindings across ports, a portable UART IRQ API, and enhanced mpremote recursive copy. Damien George goes into more detail about the RISC-V improvements: … include an RV32IMC native code emitter, native NLR and GC register scanning implementations for 32- and 64-bit RISC-V, support for placing RV32IMC native code in .mpy files and also freezing it, and RISC-V semihosting support. Testing for RISC-V is done with the qemu and unix ports, and the support is utilised in the esp32 and rp2 ports. The Raspberry Pi RP2350 comes with both Arm Cortex-M33 and RISC-V cores, and the good [...]
Makerdiary recently introduced the iMX RT1011 Nano Kit, a compact, high-performance development board featuring NXP’s iMX RT1011 Crossover MCU. With an Arm Cortex-M7 core running at up to 500 MHz, it delivers strong CPU performance and real-time responsiveness The iMX RT1011 Nano Kit includes 128 KB of on-chip RAM, configurable as Tightly Coupled Memory or […]
Login
