BeRTOS real-time operating system with ARM Cortex and Arduino support

BeRTOS 2.5 is ready and for the first time, the embedded real-time operating system supports processors in the ARM Cortex-M3 family by Atmel, Luminary, NPX and ST Microelectronics. The system also runs on most processors in Atmel's AVR family as well as the CPUs in the AT91 family with ARM-7 core.

BeRTOS is not just a kernel, it includes the most important drivers for the usual UART and parallel port interfaces, RTC, various I/O components, I2C, Flash interfaces and file system drivers that allow data to be written to such media as SD cards, as well as a graphics library for display control and a complete command line terminal. The system is configured via a wizard that was written in Python and offers customised configuration files for various popular system development boards, including the Arduino Duemilanove. Sample implementations such as a DIY GPS receiver, which are included in the source tree, are designed to help new BeRTOS users familiarise themselves with the system.

The embedded operating system is available under a modified GPL licence that is similar to the LGPL and also seems to include elements of the Creative Commons licence. In addition to the OS sources, which are platform independent, a Software Development Kit, for Windows only, is available to download. This is a commercial product that costs €249 (approx. £206) although the developers do offer a 30-day free trial.

(crve)