Episode 21
Zephyr - First Experiences
Some thoughts on our first few months with Zephyr
The TMPDIR podcast · Cliff Brake and Khem Raj
May 26, 202334m 22s
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Show Notes
Available on your favorite podcast platform.
- backstory
- working on a project using freeRTOS on STM32H743
- a lot of work integrating things like Ethernet/USB
- code generation has tradeoffs
- without one week, 1 engineer working part-time had Zephyr running with most drivers working
- Build
- Kconfig (very granular)
- Device Tree -> C headers
- extensive use of Macros
- no C++
- differences between other RTOS models
- most MCU tooling takes RTOS, and MCU integrates and delivers
- Zephyr does the opposite – they take MCU HAL, and then integrate and deliver directly to developers
- Support/Community
- Discord
- Github discussions
- Shell
- is amazing
- proper terminal with tab completion, proper backspace support, etc
- keeps what you are typing at bottom of screen even if there are logging messages scrolling
- list threads, memory used, %CPU, etc
- Projects like Beagle Connect Freedom – they are piping shell over radio connection
- Logging
- standard levels ERR, WRN, INF, DBG
- easy to add a logging domain in any module
- Macros automatically apply LOG_WRN() to current logging domain
- can change log level of each domain at runtime in shell
- Tooling
- well-integrated flashing
- debugging uses the command line GDB
- Linux connections
- Performance
- challenges
- configuration
- tracing code through system calls
- documentation is fairly good, but can be hard to find things
- opinion
- The Zephyr project is a sustainable approach as MCUs become more complex
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