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FreeRTOS is a real-time operating system kernel for embedded devices. In development since 2003, it is the market-leading real-time operating system, having been ported to more than 40 microcontroller architectures. On November 29, 2017, Amazon acquired FreeRTOS and announced Amazon FreeRTOS (or a:FreeRTOS), a real-time operating system kernel based on FreeRTOS and focused on low-power, connected devices

Today, Industry 4.0 and the IIoT have introduced a whole new set of challenges: There will be more connected devices, which will generate more data, that in turn will lead to even more complex software applications. The playing field will change at an exponentially accelerating pace, including the state of device infrastructure, application complexity, and development. Read on for more insight in this Guest blog post from our partner, The Qt Company. 

Einführung

Derzeit werden graphische Benutzeroberflächen (sogennante GUIs) bei einer grossen Anzahl von Embedded Projekten verwendet. GUIs ermöglichen dem Benutzer die Interaktion mit digitalen Geräten mittels graphischen Elementen wie Icons oder anderen Symbolen auf dem Bildschirm. Gute GUIs sind eine wichtige Komponente von Embedded-Geräten, da sie die Bedienung von Anwendungen stark vereinfachen und dem Benutzer so den schnellen Umgang ermöglichen.

Qt, GTK oder Electron sind nur einige von vielen Tools auf dem Markt, welche das Erstellen von GUIs ermöglichen. Electron ist zudem ein Framework für die Entwicklung von native Applications und verwendet aktuelle Technologien wie JavaScript, HTML und CSS.

In diesem Blogbeitrag installieren wir das Framework Electron auf einem Toradex Colibri iMX6, führen einige Beispielprogramme aus und evaluieren die Software. Zum Abschluss entwickeln wir eine grundlegende GUI mittels Node.js, JavaScript, HTML und CSS.

Cloud services have been a reality for some years already. Right now, one of the biggest concepts in the field is the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. When we electronics folk think of the cloud, the first thing that comes to our minds is connecting several devices to it and uploading data to be visualized, stored and analyzed - among other possibilities. Of course, other uses may come to mind, too.

One thing we don't always realize is that the cloud can be much more than simply an IoT tool, or something only large corporations have access to. We can make use of the cloud for everyday tasks, too. As a matter of fact, that's the motivation behind this article - taking a time-consuming task and using the cloud to simplify our lives a little!

In this guest blog post, Diamond Systems explains considerations to use Computer Modules for an application inside an emergency response vehicle. Diamond Systems is a valued member of the Toradex Partner Network providing off-the-shelf ready-to-use Carrier Boards for Toradex Modules.

You most likely have heard about the recent WannaCry cyber attack. With IoT, there are more and more connected embedded devices, so security is a big concern. After WannaCry, requests about security peaked, especially among Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact users. Here's a short blog post reflecting our view.

In this post, our partner Antmicro provides details of its brand-new Android 7.1 demo image for Toradex Apalis TK1 and the accompanying TK1 baseboard, bringing a familiar, cutting-edge UI experience to a small form-factor, high-performance Tegra^™ K1 solution, easy to embed in your product.

This is a series of articles aiming to demystify the development of embedded systems using Heterogeneous Multicore Processing architecture powered SoCs. Through a practical approach and presentation of several demos, this will provide to you a quick start to your development.

The flash storage is often a topic on our support channels. Toradex invests a lot of resources into making the storage as reliable as possible. Nevertheless, it is important to understand some basics of the underlying storage device. One of the most important things you have to know: the storage wears out, you can destroy your storage device by writing a lot to the built-in storage device. With this post, we want to give you a basic overview of potential issues flash storage can have.

Traditionally, microcontrollers are used for systems with deterministic real-time response. With the increasing need for higher performance, exciting UI and high-speed connectivity in end-products, many system designers are inclined to use application processors or SoCs with a feature-rich OS, a combination that may compromise real-time response. In this blog post, we present three approaches to add real-time behaviour in SoC-based designs.

Despite OpenEmbedded/Yocto being nice tools to generate your image, using the build system to compile and test tiny alterations applied to independent packages, although possible, can become confusing and slow. Read this post for details on the author's suggestion on how to alter the kernel and add the changes to OpenEmbedded/Yocto.

Wondering whether to use Android or Linux for your next embedded product development? In this post, our partner Antmicro attempts to answer this question and also discusses the differences and commonalities between these two operating systems.

In this post, we experiment with OpenCL using Toradex's Apalis iMX6Q SoM to compare two applications - one of them running on the GPU and the other on the CPU. At the end we share the results found in this experiment.

Over 10 years ago, we wrote some small pieces of WinCE code in order to demonstrate different features of our computer on modules (CoM), or system on modules (SoM); for example: GPIOs, I2C, Analog Inputs (ADC), etc. With the pure demo purpose in our minds we didn’t pay attention to things like maintenance, compatibility across different modules, etc. However, these demos were used by a huge Windows Embedded Compact customer base. We received more and more support and feature requests which we then started to integrate into the demo code. As a result, we got the library package for our PXA and Tegra^® based SoMs as it exists today.

The development of a carrier board can be divided into 3 main tasks, system design, schematic capture, and layout. In my previous blog post, I have already talked about the system design and the schematic capturing. Here, I would like to give you some insights to the third phase of the design, the layout. I personally enjoy this phase since it requires a lot of imagination and experience. Also in this part, I would like to focus on designing a low-cost carrier board for a Toradex computer module.

This blog post will give an overview on - Why use a custom embedded Linux image, The build environment, Qt application development, The GitHub tool, Creating and editing layers and recipes and Building the image

This is a Guest Blog Post by Antmicro, a Toradex Partner since many years. Antmicro can support Toradex customers in integrating Toradex modules in their own application, including product design with customized Toradex carrier boards or with custom software. Antmicro has a wide spectrum of SW and HW capabilities, for this blog they will focus on their knowledge around CUDA^® and Vision Processing and on the new Toradex Apalis TK1 SoM, based on NVIDIA’s powerful Tegra^® K1 SoC.

In the previous blog posts, my colleagues already brought up many arguments for using a computer module for your next hardware project. So, let us assume you have taken the decision in favour of a SoM and you now want to know how to start with your carrier board design. I would like to give you some valuable information and insights that can help in successfully designing a low-cost carrier board for a Toradex Module.