Embedded system and RTOS

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system designed to handle multiple tasks, with each task having specific time requirements and failure handling needs, making it harder for the programmer to write correct code because it is often necessary to preempt one task in order to run another. The term real-time refers to the requirement that the software can handle events with little or no delay. RTOS design makes heavy use of redundancy and parallel processing to ensure this critical characteristic, and thus consumes more hardware resources (e.g., memory, CPU power) than non-real-time operating systems like Linux or Windows.

An introduction to embedded systems
An embedded system is a complete computer that is built into a single unit. Embedded systems are used in many different devices, such as washing machines, microwaves, cars, trucks and aircraft. There are many different types of embedded systems, but all have the same basic functionality: to control one or more internal device or peripheral.

An introduction to RTOS (Real Time Operating Systems)
An embedded system is any device that has a computer inside of it, to control how the device operates. It’s also called a smart machine. Embedded systems are everywhere, even in your microwave! An embedded system can also be something like a car’s engine, or an alarm clock. Embedded systems use an operating system to do their work. RTOS stands for Real Time Operating System. These operating systems are designed to schedule tasks so they happen when you want them to happen, rather than waiting around for other tasks to complete first before moving on to the next task on its queue.

Benefits of using RTOS
RTOS is a real-time operating system that runs on embedded systems. These are systems with limited memory resources for processing. The most popular RTOS is Free RTOS which can be downloaded for free from the Free RTOS website.
FreeRTOS is simple to setup, easy to use, open source, and supports multiple architectures including ARM Cortex M3/M4, STM32F4/F7, ESP8266/ESP32, TI CC430/CC26xx.
Some of the benefits of using FreeRTOS are: * It’s modularized so the programmer only needs to worry about their application and not the low level code needed by an OS like Linux or Windows.

Types of RTOS
There are three basic types of operating systems that are used for embedded devices: Monolithic, Microkernel and Hybrid. The monolithic operating system is the most common type of RTOS for embedded systems. A monolithic operating system is a single program that controls the hardware from top to bottom. This type of OS is easy to write because it only has one function, but can become quite large in size because it needs to be able to do everything on its own. In contrast, a microkernel-based operating system consists of multiple small programs or modules that handle different parts of the hardware separately.

Advantages and disadvantages of using commercial vs. open source OS
The advantages of using a commercial OS is that these companies provide professional support for their products, and the product has been tested in many different environments. These systems are reliable and have a higher performance than open source operating systems. The disadvantages of using a commercial OS is that it may not be as customizable as an open source OS. They also cost money to purchase or license. The advantage of using an open source OS is that they are free to use, which means they will always be up-to-date with the latest features and patches due to community involvement. Open source operating systems are less reliable because there are not enough people working on it, so it may not work properly in certain environments such as larger networks or high security settings.

key features of using an OS in an IoT device
An OS is a software program that manages the device’s hardware resources. In order to function, an OS typically needs a kernel, drivers, libraries, and tools. When embedded systems are connected to networks they need an operating system so that they can communicate with other devices securely. For example, Linux is one of the most popular operating systems for IoT devices because of its inherent security features.
A key feature of any operating system is being able to allocate processor time between different tasks or processes. This process can be called multitasking or multiprocessing depending on the type of computer architecture it’s running on. Another key feature is an ability to share data among multiple processes by using memory pages or shared memory objects like semaphores and mutexes. If one process writes data to a page and another reads from it at the same time, a conflict will occur which will usually require some form of arbitration. One more important feature is the ability to recover from errors when executing instructions on the CPU. Some types of errors might corrupt memory contents (such as writing to read-only memory) while others might result in an unexpected exception such as division by zero.
A final key component is persistence – if power goes out or interrupts get disabled during execution, then information about what has been done should not be lost so that if power comes back on again then things continue where they left off without starting over from scratch.