You're reading from Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers Create high-performance, real-time embedded systems using FreeRTOS, STM32 MCUs, and SEGGER debug tools

Product type Paperback

Published in Sep 2025

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781803237725

Length 570 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

Concepts

Operating Systems

Authors (2):

Jim Yuill

Penn Linder

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Table of Contents (27) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1: Introduction to RTOSes, the Dev-Board, and Tools

2. Introducing Real-Time Systems FREE CHAPTER

3. Introducing the Development Board

4. Introducing the Development-Tools

5. Understanding Super-Loops

6. Implementing the Super-Loop

7. Part 2: The FreeRTOS Scheduler, Tasks, and Primary APIs

8. Understanding RTOS Tasks

9. Running the FreeRTOS Scheduler

10. Protecting Data and Synchronizing Tasks

11. Intertask Communication

12. Part 3: Using FreeRTOS to Build Systems

13. Drivers and ISRs

14. More Efficient Drivers and ISRs

15. Sharing Hardware Peripherals among Tasks

16. Creating Loose Coupling with Queues

17. Part 4: System Design and Troubleshooting

18. FreeRTOS Memory Management

19. Multi-Processor and Multi-Core Systems

20. Troubleshooting Tips and Next Steps

21. Part 5: Reference Information and FreeRTOS Installation

22. Other Books You May Enjoy

23. Index

Appendix A: Tools Quick-Reference

1. Appendix B: Reference Information

2. Appendix C: Creating FreeRTOS Projects, and Installing FreeRTOS

Replacing malloc and free

Many C-runtimes will ship with an implementation of malloc. However, the C-runtime versions for embedded-systems are not necessarily thread-safe by default. Because each C-runtime is different, the steps needed to make malloc thread safe will vary. The included STM toolchain used in this book includes newlib-nano as the C-runtime library. The following are a few notes regarding newlib-nano:

newlib-nano is a derivative of newlib, targeted for embedded systems. It uses similar APIs as newlib and some of the information about newlib applies to newlib-nano.
newlib-nano uses malloc and realloc for stdio.h functionality (for example, printf). (realloc is a library-function for resizing a memory-block that was previously obtained by a library-function such as malloc.)
realloc is not directly supported by FreeRTOS heap implementations.
FreeRTOSConfig.h includes the configUSE_NEWLIB_REENTRANT setting to make newlib thread safe, but it...