FreeRTOS Real-Time Programming Online

• Cortex-M4 architecture overview
• Discover the concepts of Real-Time multitasking
• Understand Real-Time constraints
• Determinism
• Preemption
• Interrupts
• Understand the FreeRTOS architecture
• Discover the various FreeRTOS services and APIs
• Learn how to develop FreeRTOS applications

This course is designed for anyone interested in, or tasked with, the development of a resource constrained Real-Time system. For example, software engineers, field engineers and (project) managers.

• Prior attendance of C Programming for Embedded Systems is recommended 
  or:
• Familiarity with embedded C concepts and programming
• Basic knowledge of embedded processors

No hardware is required. The course uses a QEMU emulated STM32F407-Discovery board (Cortex/M4) with System Workbench IDE running on a virtual machine in the cloud. Delegates get to keep a copy of the virtual machine.

• Soft PDF copies of the course materials are provided to each delegate.

This course is provided in partnership with embedded experts AC6.

SESSION 1

Cortex-M Overview

• ARMv7-M Architecture
• Cortex-M4 Architecture
• Registers and Execution States
• Privileges, Mode and Stacks

Exercise:  Create a new project

• Reset Behavior
• Exception and Interrupts
• The System Timer

Exercise:  Interrupt Management

• Memory Model
• Power Management
• STM32F407x Implementation Example

 

SESSION 2

Real-Time Concepts

• Embedded system architectures
• Tasks and process
• Real-Time

Exercise:  Context Switch

Introduction to FreeRTOS

• The FreeRTOS Family
• FreeRTOS+Ecosystem
• Why use FreeRTOS
• FreeRTOS Code Structure

Scheduling

• Scheduler
• Schedulability

Task Management (1st part)

• Creating Tasks

Exercise:  Task Management

• Task Priorities
• Task States
• The idle task
• Delays
• Changing Task Priority
• Deleting Tasks
• Suspending Tasks

Exercise:  Periodic Tasks

• Kernel Structures
• Thread Local Storage

SESSION 3

Task Management (2nd part)

• Kernel Interrupts on Cortex-M4
• Scheduling Traces

Exercise:  Task Statistics

Memory Management in FreeRTOS

• FreeRTOS Memory Managers
• Out of Memory management
• Stack overflow detection

Exercise:  Context Switch Measurement

Resource Management

• Mutual Exclusion
• Critical Sections
• Mutexes

Exercise:  Resource Management

• Gatekeeper Tasks
• Lock-Free Data Structures

SESSION 4

Synchronization Primitives

• Queues

Exercise:  Queue Management

• Queues Sets
• Synchronization
• Events and Event Groups
• The Readers/writer problem

Exercise:  Readers Writer Problem

Interrupt Management (1st part) 2 hours

• Tasks and Interrupts
• FreeRTOS Binary and Counting Semaphores

Exercise:  Interrupt Management

• Using Other Primitives within an ISR

SESSION 5

Interrupt Management (2nd part)

• Task Notifications
• Stream Buffers
• Message Buffers
• Interrupt Nesting
• Low Power Support

Exercise: Tickless Mode

Software Timer

• Software Timers

Exercise:  Implement Soft Timers

• Deferred Interrupt Handling

Exercise:  Software Timer Management