When I first time read about mbed OS I was really sceptical, especially idea of
having web browser as my IDE and compiler in the cloud seems to be very scary to
me. ARM engineers proved to provide high quality products, but this was not
enough to me. Then I heard very good words about mbed OS IDE from Jack Ganssle,
this was still not enough. Finally customers started to ask about this RTOS and
I had to look deeper.
There are other well known OSes, but most of them have issues:
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FreeRTOS - probably most popular, GPL license with exceptions and
restrictions, doesn’t have drivers provided this is mostly filled by MCU
vendor in SDK. This can lead to problems ie. lack of well supported DTLS
library or specific communication protocol. It often happen that MCU vendors
doesn’t maintain community, so code base grows internally and is not revealed.
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RIoT - well known and popular, LGPL 2.1 license what is typically problematic
when your work affect system core. Contain lot of features, but number of
supported platforms is limited. Targeted at academics and hobbyists.
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Zephyr - great initiative backed by Linaro, Linux Foundation,
Qualcomm/NXP/Freescale and Intel. License Apache 2.0, which IMO is much better
for embedded then (L)GPL. Unluckily this is brand new and support is very
limited. For sure porting new platform to Zephyr can be great fun and
principles are very good, but support is very limited and it will take time to
make it mature enough to seriously consider in commercial product.
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mbed OS - this one looks really great. Apache 2.0. Tons of drivers, clean
environment, huge, good-looking and well written documentation. Wide range of
hardware is already supported and it came from designed of most popular core
in the world. Community is big but it is still not so vibrant as ie. RIoT.
Below I want to present Linux user experience from my first contact with mbed OS
on Nucleo-F411RE platform.
{% img center /assets/images/nucleo-F411RE.jpg 640 400 ‘image’ ‘images’ %}
I have to say that at first glance whole system is very well documented with
great look and feel. Main site requires 2 clicks to
be in correct place for Embedded System Engineer. In general we have 3 main path
when we choose developer tools: Online IDE, mbed CLI and 3rd party. Last covers
blasting variety of IDEs including Makefile and Eclipse CDT based GCC support.
Things that are annoying during first contact we web page:
- way to contribute documentation is not clear
- there is no description how to render documentation locally
- can’t upload avatar on forum - no information what format and resolution is
supported
But those are less interesting things. Going back to development environment for
me 2 options where interesting mbed CLI and plain Makefile.
mbed CLI
I already have setup vitrualenv for Python 2.7:
First thing to like in mbed-cli is that it was implemented in Python. Of
course this is very subjective since I’m familiar with Python, but it good to
know that I can hack something that doesn’t work for me. Is is
Open Source.
I also like the idea of mimicking git subcommands. More information about mbed
CLI can be found in
documentation.
It is also great that mbed CLI tries to manage whole program dependencies in
structured way, so no more hassle with external libraries versioning and trying
to keep sanity when you have to clone your development workspace. Of course this
have to be checked on battlefield, since documentation promise may be not
enough.
So first thing that hit me when trying to move forward was this message:
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$ mbed new mbed-os-program
[mbed] Creating new program "mbed-os-program" (git)
[mbed] Adding library "mbed-os" from "https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os" at branch latest
[mbed] Updating reference "mbed-os" -> "https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os/#d5de476f74dd4de27012eb74ede078f6330dfc3f"
[mbed] Auto-installing missing Python modules...
[mbed] WARNING: Unable to auto-install required Python modules.
---
[mbed] WARNING: -----------------------------------------------------------------
[mbed] WARNING: The mbed OS tools in this program require the following Python modules: prettytable, intelhex, junit_xml, pyyaml, mbed_ls, mbed_host_tests, mbed_greentea, beautifulsoup4, fuzzywuzzy
[mbed] WARNING: You can install all missing modules by running "pip install -r requirements.txt" in "/home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-program/mbed-os"
[mbed] WARNING: On Posix systems (Linux, Mac, etc) you might have to switch to superuser account or use "sudo"
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This appeared to be some problem with my distro:
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(...)
ext/_yaml.c:4:20: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory
#include "Python.h"
^
compilation terminated.
(...)
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This indicate lack of python2.7-dev package, so:
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sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade
sudo aptitude install python2.7-dev
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After verifying that you can create program, let’s try to get well known hello
world for embedded:
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mbed import https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os-example-blinky
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To compile example we need toolchain. The easiest way would be to get distro
package:
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sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-none-eabi
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Now you should set toolchain configuration, if you won’t error like this may
pop-up:
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$ mbed compile -t GCC_ARM -m NUCLEO_F411RE
Building project mbed-os-example-blinky (NUCLEO_F411RE, GCC_ARM)
Scan: .
Scan: FEATURE_BLE
Scan: FEATURE_UVISOR
Scan: FEATURE_LWIP
Scan: FEATURE_COMMON_PAL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_END_DEVICE
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK_FULL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_HOST
Scan: FEATURE_STORAGE
Scan: mbed
Scan: env
Compile [ 0.4%]: AnalogIn.cpp
[ERROR] In file included from ./mbed-os/drivers/AnalogIn.h:19:0,
from ./mbed-os/drivers/AnalogIn.cpp:17:
./mbed-os/platform/platform.h:22:19: fatal error: cstddef: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
[mbed] ERROR: "python" returned error code 1.
[mbed] ERROR: Command "python -u /home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-example-blinky/mbed-os/tools/make.py -t GCC_ARM -m NUCLEO_F411RE --source . --build ./BUILD/NUCLEO_F411RE/GCC_ARM" in "/home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-example-blinky"
---
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Toolchain configuration is needed:
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mbed config --global GCC_ARM_PATH "/usr/bin"
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But then we get another problem:
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$ mbed compile -t GCC_ARM -m NUCLEO_F411RE
Building project mbed-os-example-blinky (NUCLEO_F411RE, GCC_ARM)
Scan: .
Scan: FEATURE_BLE
Scan: FEATURE_UVISOR
Scan: FEATURE_LWIP
Scan: FEATURE_COMMON_PAL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_END_DEVICE
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK_FULL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_HOST
Scan: FEATURE_STORAGE
Scan: mbed
Scan: env
Compile [ 1.9%]: main.cpp
[ERROR] In file included from ./mbed-os/rtos/Thread.h:27:0,
from ./mbed-os/rtos/rtos.h:28,
from ./mbed-os/mbed.h:22,
from ./main.cpp:1:
./mbed-os/platform/Callback.h:21:15: fatal error: new: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
[mbed] ERROR: "python" returned error code 1.
[mbed] ERROR: Command "python -u /home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-example-blinky/mbed-os/tools/make.py -t GCC_ARM -m NUCLEO_F411RE --source . --build ./BUILD/NUCLEO_F411RE/GCC_ARM" in "/home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-example-blinky"
---
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I’m not sure what is the reason but I expect lack of g++-arm-none-eabi but it
is not provided by Debian at this point. So its time to switch to toolchain
downloaded directly from
GNU ARM Embedded Toolchain page.
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wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/287101520/gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_4-2016q3-20160926-linux.tar.bz2
tar xvf gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_4-2016q3-20160926-linux.tar.bz2
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Then change your global mbed configuration:
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mbed config --global GCC_ARM_PATH "/path/to/gcc-arm-none-eabi-5_4-2016q3/bin"
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Now compilation works without problems:
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$ mbed compile -t GCC_ARM -m NUCLEO_F411RE
Building project mbed-os-example-blinky (NUCLEO_F411RE, GCC_ARM)
Scan: .
Scan: FEATURE_BLE
Scan: FEATURE_UVISOR
Scan: FEATURE_LWIP
Scan: FEATURE_COMMON_PAL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_BORDER_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_END_DEVICE
Scan: FEATURE_NANOSTACK_FULL
Scan: FEATURE_THREAD_ROUTER
Scan: FEATURE_LOWPAN_HOST
Scan: FEATURE_STORAGE
Scan: mbed
Scan: env
Compile [ 1.9%]: BusIn.cpp
Compile [ 2.3%]: AnalogIn.cpp
Compile [ 2.7%]: BusInOut.cpp
(...)
Compile [ 99.2%]: serial_api.c
[Warning] serial_api.c@333,35: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
[Warning] serial_api.c@821,27: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
[Warning] serial_api.c@823,27: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
[Warning] serial_api.c@825,27: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
[Warning] serial_api.c@827,27: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
[Warning] serial_api.c@954,23: unused variable 'tmpval' [-Wunused-variable]
Compile [ 99.6%]: stm_spi_api.c
Compile [100.0%]: test_env.cpp
Link: mbed-os-example-blinky
Elf2Bin: mbed-os-example-blinky
+--------------------+-------+-------+------+
| Module | .text | .data | .bss |
+--------------------+-------+-------+------+
| Fill | 130 | 4 | 5 |
| Misc | 21471 | 2492 | 100 |
| drivers | 118 | 4 | 100 |
| hal | 536 | 0 | 8 |
| platform | 1162 | 4 | 269 |
| rtos | 38 | 4 | 4 |
| rtos/rtx | 5903 | 20 | 6870 |
| targets/TARGET_STM | 5950 | 4 | 724 |
| Subtotals | 35308 | 2532 | 8080 |
+--------------------+-------+-------+------+
Allocated Heap: unknown
Allocated Stack: unknown
Total Static RAM memory (data + bss): 10612 bytes
Total RAM memory (data + bss + heap + stack): 10612 bytes
Total Flash memory (text + data + misc): 37840 bytes
Object file test_env.o is not unique! It could be made from: ./mbed-os/features/frameworks/greentea-client/source/test_env.cpp /home/pietrushnic/tmp/mbed-os-example-blinky/mbed-os/features/unsupported/tests/mbed/env/test_env.cpp
Image: ./BUILD/NUCLEO_F411RE/GCC_ARM/mbed-os-example-blinky.bin
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So we have binary now we would like to deploy it to target.
Test real hardware
To test build binary on Nucleo-F411RE the only thing is to connect board through
mini USB and copy build result to mounted directory. In my case it was something
like this:
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cp BUILD/NUCLEO_F411RE/GCC_ARM/mbed-os-example-blinky.bin /media/pietrushnic/NODE_F411RE/
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This is pretty weird interface for programming, but simplified to the maximum.
Serial console example
Modify your main.cpp with something like:
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#include "mbed.h"
DigitalOut led1(LED1);
Serial pc(USBTX, USBRX);
// main() runs in its own thread in the OS
// (note the calls to Thread::wait below for delays)
int main() {
int i = 0;
while (true) {
pc.printf("%d\r\n", i);
i++;
led1 = !led1;
Thread::wait(1000);
}
}
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Recompile and copy result as it was described above. To connect to device please
check your dmesg:
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$ dmesg|grep tty
[ 0.000000] console [tty0] enabled
[ 0.935792] 00:05: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4, base_baud = 115200) is a 16550A
[ 3.219884] systemd[1]: Created slice system-getty.slice.
[ 4.058666] usb 3-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[10721.756835] ftdi_sio ttyUSB0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
[10727.552536] cdc_acm 3-1:1.2: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
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This means that your Nucleo registered /dev/ttyAMA0 device and to connect you
can use minicom:
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minicom -b 9600 -o -D /dev/ttyACM0
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Summary
I hope this tutorial add something or help resolving some issue that you may
struggle with. As you can see mbed is not perfect, but it looks like it may
serve as great replacement for previous environments ie. custom IDE from various
vendors. What would be useful to verify is for sure OpenOCD with STLink to see
if whole development stack is ready to use under Linux. In next post I will try
to start work with Atmel SAM G55 and mbed OS.
Piotr Król
Founder of 3mdeb, a passionate advocate for open-source firmware solutions, driven by a belief in transparency, innovation, and trustworthiness. Every day is a new opportunity to embody the company's vision, emphasizing user liberty, simplicity, and privacy. Beyond business, a casual chess and bridge player, finding peace in nature and nourishment in theology, philosophy, and psychology. A person striving to foster a healthy community, grounded in collaboration and shared growth, while nurturing a lifelong curiosity and a desire to deeply understand the world.
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