Table of Contents

Overview

FreeRTOS is an open source Real Time Operating System. It implements a very minimalist set of functions for basic task handling and memory management. FreeRTOS does not provide network communication, drivers for external hardware, or access to a filesystem. Among its features are the following characteristics:

  1. Preemptive tasks
  2. Small footprint
  3. Written in C and compiled with various C compilers
  4. Unlimited number of tasks can run at the same time
  5. Implements queues, binary and counting semaphores and mutexes.
  6. Inter-task communication accomplished using queues.

Application details

The objective of this application is to showcase FreeRTOS features like multiple task creation and inter-task communication using queues. This application creates two tasks and one message queue. Task one sends a constant message into the queue, and task two receives the message from the queue. After receiving each message, the second task prints the message to a serial terminal over UART.

Source Files briefly explained

Usage

  1. Setup a serial communication application. Open a serial terminal on a PC with the following settings:
    • Port: Enumerated COM port
    • Baud rate: 115200
    • Data: 8 bit
    • Parity: None
    • Stop: 1 bit
    • Flow control: None
  2. Run the reference application.
    • Open the project in CCS/IAR. Build the application and debug to load to the device, or flash the binary using UniFlash.
  3. Observe the status messages displayed on the terminal by second task.

Limitations/Known Issues