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What is the sense of a RTOS on a single-chip microcontroller?

Hello,

I do not have a idea, where a RTOS on a singlechip microcontroller is good for. I know, that it is good for making two (or more) processes parallel but cannot imagine, how this works. O.K, a simple example to make it clear. There is microcontroller and two processes shall run on it. The first one ANDs two intput-pins and gives the result to an output-pin. The second one ORs two other inputs and gives the result to another output-pin. If I want to make this processes parallel I write both commands into one program and they will run "parallel". What would be the way, the RTOS would make this two processes "parallel"?

Reply to
Paul Rosen
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Consider my furnace project. Each MCU is constantly running a 1wire search to check for buttons, scanning a 1wire temperature and humidity module, talking to the gumstix via i2c, queuing up serial data for the LCD, keeping track of the time, and keeping some LEDs updated.

Or look at something like eCos, which includes interrupt-driven device drivers for serial, USB, ethernet, etc, and includes a full TCP/IP stack and file system drivers for everything from flash to hard drives.

The two "processes" don't have to both be applications. You can have one application (the "main" thread) and lots of threads taking care of your devices.

And RTOS also provides a number of standard services, like networking, serial channels (rs232, usb, SPI), file systems, etc.

Reply to
DJ Delorie

Here are some ideas, although it is really very dependent on the characteristics of your application.

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Regards,
Richard.

+ http://www.FreeRTOS.org
13 official architecture ports, 1000 downloads per week.

+ http://www.SafeRTOS.com
Certified by TÜV as meeting the requirements for safety related systems.
Reply to
FreeRTOS.org

Thanks, very good. That answers indeed, what I was not able to ask. :-) A further question: Are there URLs, a forum or a group concerning FreeRTOS on the Microchip dsPIC signalcontrollers?

Reply to
Paul Rosen

Specific to FreeRTOS.org in general, rather than just the dsPIC:

formatting link 

--
Regards,
Richard.

+ http://www.FreeRTOS.org
13 official architecture ports, 1000 downloads per week.

+ http://www.SafeRTOS.com
Certified by TÜV as meeting the requirements for safety related systems.
Reply to
FreeRTOS.org

OT: DJ, I am still using your wanderful GCC port for DOS (lot of thanks for it). I never had any idea your intrests are so wide!

Thanks, Arcady

Reply to
Archi

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