My first post. Not sure this is the right place to post something like this.
I’ve been doing control system development work since the 1980s. I’d like to take a look at FreeRTOS. What I haven’t stumbled on yet is some recommendation on what hardware one could start with to give it a whirl?
Something not too expensive.
My current work involves systems with 2 NICs and up to 64mb of memory (although 16mb would be enough to start I think).
The other attribute we use quite a bit is the ability to power up a system and have it load a control system image from a server. We’re not flashing control systems here.
Maybe FreeRTOS doesn’t fit with what I’m looking for but thought I’d ask.
If you would like to tinker around with FreeRTOS right away then you could use a QEMU example, or run FreeRTOS on Windows or Linux. The examples that come with the book run on Windows, but I think still use version 8 of the kernel, where we are currently on V10.4.x.
You will need some kind of bootloader if you want to run an image received from the network. I did this many years ago but can’t remember the boot protocol used, but it was something very standard UDP based, and in that case actually built into the network card itself.
What you could do is get yourself an eval board - for example the stm32 discovery series -, a small deug probe such as an ST link (or a chinese clone) - and that is it, hardwarewise. Costs very little money, then pick a software suite - IDE, toolset - from a wide range of available eco systems, preferrably one that already comes with code examples for the target of your choice, and you are in business. Getting started is really easy, and we are here to help when questions arise…