Evalbot OS Set Free

posted Aug 25th 2011 11:01am by
filed under: HackIt

[Theo] tipped us off about something that every TI Evalbot owner may be interested in, the The manual and source code for the uC/OS-III kernel is now available for download. UC/OS-III is what came with the evalbot, and it is a realtime operating system for that and many other chips. The problem with it for most hobby level people is that just the manual was 100$, and unless you already knew something about the system it did not sound very attractive.

But now micrium, the author of US/OS-III, has released the source code free to use in non commercial applications, and manuals for every chip supported it may drum up some more interest in this neat little RTOS. Though it does require a subscriber login.

Excerpt:

Dear Subscriber,

The ideal scenario for developers wishing to evaluate embedded software is to be granted easy access to the software’s full source code.  In the case of Micriµm’s celebrated real-time kernel, µC/OS-III, this ideal has become reality.  Last week, Micriµm announced a new policy for µC/OS-III: the kernel is now “source available.” µC/OS-III’s incomparably clean source code, as well as PDFs of the popular books describing the kernel, can be downloaded from Micriµm’s Web site at no cost, giving developers a refreshingly fast and simple means of beginning an evaluation

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29 Responses to Evalbot OS Set Free

  • zogzog says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:12 am

    Cool, just need some free evalbot now ;)

    Reply Report comment
  • xorpunk says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:23 am

    r/t OSs only abstract GPIO and MMU calls, they don’t handle paging and topology etc..

    You could role your own inside a month with any chip sdk..

    Reply Report comment
  • Jay says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:27 am

    Does anybody have an opinion on µC/OS-III vs. FreeRTOS?

    Reply Report comment
  • adam says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:35 am

    awesome thank you. dling now.

    Reply Report comment
  • goldscott says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:36 am

    Great news. I want the book to help out with the evalbot I have.

    Reply Report comment
  • adam says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:38 am

    what does “Source Available” mean? is that “Open-Source with caveats”?

    Reply Report comment
  • Adam Outler says:
    August 25, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    damn… this junk is worthless. give us some open source stuff.. TI stuff with exampl es of usb/ethernet/sdcard… uc/os3 my butt. it took them 20 years to develop this unuser-friendly generic kernel… really? i wish someone would write a kernel like java with proper documentaton and names that are easy to remember.

    are you listening TI? example code that is not already built into the unit at shipping time is required. There are several undocumented/uncoded areas which leave the evalbot sitting on my shelf.

    are you listening micrium? shit like “OSTCBCurPtr–>StkPtr =R14″ does not encourage me to attempt to learn your convoluted methods… in fact im more likely to grab the processor manual and work directly with the registers.

    Reply Report comment
    • xorpunk says:
      August 25, 2011 at 12:33 pm

      TI is a business, they’ll never support calc modding or giving full docs about their IP cores..they are all in it for business.

      The only reason you’re seeing TI dev stuff for independents is because the market that was there in the 70s and 80s is back again..same for radioshack..

      That being said RTOS dev is super simple..there is barely any abstractions..

      Reply Report comment
    • Finger says:
      August 25, 2011 at 1:35 pm

      Adam, I just want to point out that the line of code you mentioned (OSTCBCurPtr–>StkPtr =R14) actually does make a lot of sense. It involves the current (stack) pointer of the task control block of the operating system. Taken in that context, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a better name for the structure.

      Having used both µC/OS-II/III and FreeRTOS for a few years now, I’ve had almost no complaints about either RTOS. I think anyone who wants to get better at µcontroller programming should look into them, because (once you learn the API) the RTOSes make the programs you write much simpler.

      Reply Report comment
  • BiOzZ says:
    August 25, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    and RIGHT after i chose NXP and baught the full version of there software
    … fuck …

    Reply Report comment
  • Sprite_tm says:
    August 25, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    Happily ignoring this one. rtOSses are a dime a dozen, and in 80% of the cases you can do just fine without one and just programming the bare metal. At least, that’s been the case for me.

    Reply Report comment
  • DyslexDog says:
    August 25, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    Finally!
    I can use my eval bot!

    Reply Report comment
    • BLuRry says:
      August 25, 2011 at 10:48 pm

      Amen to that! The second book actually explains the stellaris ware code… I could never make heads or tails of the stuff so this is a very welcome relief!

      (blows dust off evalbot box buried in closet)

      Reply Report comment
  • medix says:
    August 25, 2011 at 12:43 pm

    I remember using this with an FPGA based soft-core processor for an embedded systems class years ago and all this did was piss me off.

    It was overly complicated for what it had to do.

    So yeah, worthless.

    Reply Report comment
  • asdf says:
    August 25, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    The µC/OS-II book is a classic, covering almost every line of the kernel code with explanations on why certain design decisions were made.

    The µC/OS-III book on the other hand is only an API manual and offers nothing of interest if you’re not using the kernel.

    Reply Report comment
  • Dielectric says:
    August 25, 2011 at 1:25 pm

    Wow, lots of hate for uC. If nothing else, grab the source to see what good commenting style looks like. Going deeper, maybe you can learn what a really solid RTOS looks like. This thing has been evaluated, stressed, and proven in medical life-support apps. That means it will do the same thing every time, no matter what.

    Sheesh, is it that hard to accept that sometimes commercial software is actually worth it?

    Reply Report comment
  • cgimark says:
    August 25, 2011 at 1:46 pm

    uCII is a step down from UCIII in my opinion. I think they tried to do too much with III. It isn’t as well documented and is harder to use because of it.

    My guess as to why we see it being offered for free, is because it wasn’t selling. Prefer CMX any day.

    Reply Report comment
  • WestfW says:
    August 25, 2011 at 4:14 pm

    “They” were giving away this set of books at last year’s Embedded Systems Conference (I think) as well. The first book is organized like a textbook; probably a pretty useful introduction to embedded operating systems, or operating systems in general, for people who’ve never thought about it.

    Reply Report comment
  • yeskinger says:
    August 25, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    For most applications, RTOS is not necessary and is a big resource hog. It’s good to learn the concepts and roll your own subset. Also, I advocate learning the fundamentals of a state machine framework such as from quantum leaps. It will help to architect your firmware and think about how to structure your program before you do any coding.

    Reply Report comment
  • ling sm says:
    August 25, 2011 at 6:34 pm

    just don’t want to register to take a look. too busy anyway.

    Reply Report comment
  • Randy KC says:
    August 25, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    How much does a license cost? I always feel a jittery when they don’t tell you up front.

    Reply Report comment
  • Allen says:
    August 25, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    I’ve used both uC/OS-III and FreeRTOS on a Renesas dev board, and I much prefer FreeRTOS. Along with being free and open source, it’s much simpler to setup and use, and the footprint is very small. There’s lots of documentation, and ports to most microcontroller varieties (with the ability to custom port to any new architectures). uC/OS-III may be better for industrial/medical applications with rigid stability requirements, but for anything else I’d go with FreeRTOS.

    Reply Report comment
  • Necromant says:
    August 25, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    Who needs that proprietary sh*t when FreeRTOS is around?

    Reply Report comment
  • LOL says:
    August 25, 2011 at 11:18 pm

    Its a nice gesture, but the uC OS III is unstable as shit.

    The bot was a nice idea, but they used almost everything of interest on the chip itself.

    lol

    Reply Report comment
  • msc says:
    August 26, 2011 at 3:33 am

    “Though it does require a subscriber login.”
    Stopped reading there.

    Reply Report comment
  • octel says:
    August 26, 2011 at 4:47 pm

    Actually their name would be pronounced “Micrimim” (or “Micrimuum” if you’re American)

    I hate it when people misuse Greek letters. It’s not a “u”, it’s an “M”!

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