dibosco wrote on Friday, March 10, 2017:
You haven’t really said whether it has to be a Mega328 you use for this project.
If not (as you are using Linux)…
…I use Linux 99% of the time and use FreeRTOS a LOT in my job. I have a number of projects that work with Rowley Crossworks (that runs natively on Linux). If you can afford $150 for a licence and get a JTAG interface (Rowley’s Crossconnect works like a dream on Linux), you can get something like an Olimex board for, say, an STM32F103 (Olimex also do debugger interfaces for about €50 - which I haven’t tried) and have a really good project that will just work. This will give you proper debugging with breakpoints and register, memory watches etc.
Also, you can get a free 30-day licence for it to try it.
There is this board:
http://cpc.farnell.com/stmicroelectronics/nucleo-f103rb/nucleo-board-stm32f103rbt6-mcu/dp/SC13709?CMP=CPC-PLA
Which seems to have an ST-LINK v2 built in JTAG interface which Crossworks seems to support.
If you can’t afford that, then something like this might be better:
http://www.freertos.org/FreeRTOS-for-Cortex-M0-LPC1114-LPCXpresso.html
And there might well be other boards with built-in JTAG interfaces.
I have had NXP Expresso running on Linux. It is, sadly, Eclpise, but should work for you and give you proper debugging. It is a dog compared to Crossworks, but it does, basically, work. Also, I think the NXP Expresso boards [usually] have debug interfaces built into them, so you don’t have to shell out for a JTAG interface.
I have had Microchip’s MP-LAB X running on Linux as well and there seem to be projects for that. Again, it’s Eclipse and therefore a dog, but it does work.
If you can possibly afford it, I cannot recommend Crossworks and a proper JTAG interface highly enough. That set-up is really fast, really easy to use, very flexible and you don’t have to use Windows. It saves so much time and effort compared with messing around trying to get Arduino working or waiting for Eclipse-based programs to do something.
I appreciate you simply might not be able to afford $350 or so to buy a system that just works, in which case I can’t really help other than what is above. Using Windows opens you up to a whole host of other possiblities in terms of free (as in beer) IDEs; for example Atmel Studio (which is also a dog) and has a few FreeRTOS projects available.