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Nut/OS

Features

Nut/OS is based on an intentionally simple RTOS kernel, which provides a minimum of services to run Nut/Net, the TCP/IP stack. It's features include:

Main features of the TCP/IP stack are:

Nut/OS is a modular operating system. Instead of providing a fixed kernel block, all code is packed in libraries. Only those parts are linked to the final binary image, which are directly or indirectly referenced by the application. This guarantees the lowest possible footprint. Ernst Stippl regularly publishes related figures on his web site at www.es-business.com/ethernut/.

Standard C libraries like newlib or avr-libc are supported and allow to write highly portable applications. While direct hardware access and native interrupts are possible in application code, the system offers ready-to-use drivers for a large number of devices, including:

Note, that not all drivers may be available on all platforms. The following microcontrollers are actively supported:

The system is highly configurable and may work on other hardware too. Support for AVR32 is currently under development and a version for the Freescale Coldfire may become available as well. In addition it is possible to run Nut/OS applications on Linux.

In order to hide hardware specific details from application code, an almost complete C stdio API is available, which provides:

Nut/OS is perrmanently enhanced by an active community. The following features are currently not available, but planned for future releases or currently under development:

Multithreading

During system initialization, the idle thread is created in the background first. The application code is not aware of this. Like any other C program, it contains a main routine. Internally the main routine is a thread, running concurrently with the idle thread.

During runtime, the main thread may create additional threads by calling NutThreadCreate.

Thread synchronization is provided by events. A thread may wait for an event or it may post an event to wake up another thread, which is waiting for this event.

Device Drivers

Simple operating systems like Nut/OS allow application code to directly access the hardware. Device drivers are not required. Nevertheless, Nut/OS provides a large number of device drivers to allow the application to use portable, high level functions to access them. For example, an MP3 player can use the standard C runtime function fread to read the audio file from an SD Card and fwrite to send it to the MP3 decoder for playing.

For special devices, like general purpose I/O (GPIO), SPI or I2C, specific helper routines are available to keep your applications portable among all supported platforms.

Nut/OS is a modular kernel, where device drivers are included only, when the applications registers them via NutRegisterDevice.

Filesystems

While file system support is not common for tiny systems, Nut/OS provides several. The most simple is read-only and named UROM. Files are stored as C arrays and directly linked to the application code. A special utility is available to convert a complete directory on your PC's harddisk into such arrays.

The most advanced file system is a FAT12/16/32 compatible one named PHAT. It is preferably used with MultiMedia and SD Cards.

The most recent Nut/OS beta includes UFLASH, which is optimized for serial flash chips. It requires a few hundred bytes of RAM only and has an excellent wear leveling performance.

Network

Nut/OS contains a feature rich TCP/IP stack. Although quite similar, the API is not fully BSD-compatible. It uses its own set of functions. The great thing is, however, that established connections can be associated to stdio streams. For network communication, applications can use the full set of stdio routines like fprintf, fscanf, fgetc etc.

Beside basic TCP and UDP sockets, several high level protocols are included as well. The latest version supports DHCP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, SMTP, SNMP, SNTP, syslog and others.

Getting Started

Using Nut/OS on Ethernut 1.3
The Ethernut 1.3 reference hardware is based on the 8-bit ATmega128.

Using Nut/OS on Ethernut 2.1
Like Ethernut 1.3, the Ethernut 2.1 reference hardware uses an ATmega128 CPU, but offers more memory, fast Ethernet and an RS-485 interface.

Using Nut/OS on Ethernut 3.0
The Ethernut 3.0 Board comes with a fast 32-bit CPU.

Using Nut/OS on the Elektor Internet Radio
Also equipped with a 32-bit CPU, the Elektor Internet Radio not only has very large memory areas, but also the world's first Ogg Vorbis hardware encoder chip.

Nutwiki
Large collection of code snippets and tiny examples.

Additional Documents

Must Have

Nut/OS Software Manual
How to install and use Nut/OS.

Online API Documentation

API Documentation of the beta release

More documents

NEW: Porting Nut/OS
... to new platforms.

SPI Bus Support
Technical details about SPI drivers.

ARM Exception Handling
Nut/OS doesn't provide any exception handling by default. This document shows how to implement an exception handler within your application.

ARM GCC Inline Assembler Cookbook
The GNU C compiler for ARM RISC processors offers to embed assembly language code into C programs. This cool feature may be used for manually optimizing time critical parts of the software or to use specific processor instruction, which are not available in the C language.

LED control
A beginner's guide to connecting external hardware.

Floating Point Support
The kernel won't need it, but your application may want to read or write floating point numbers.

Using RS485 with Ethernut 2
Jumper settings, configuration and sample code.

Running Nut/OS on the AT91SAM9260
A step by step guide. Preliminary.

Running Nut/OS on the AT91SAM7X
Access your MultiMedia Card on the AT91SAM7X Evaluation Kit via FTP.

Running Nut/OS on the ATmega2561
Preliminary support for the ImageCraft Compiler running on Windows.

Using the Hardware Watchdog
How to implement a timer interrupt handler for Ethernut 3.

AT91 Timer Interrupts
How to implement a timer interrupt handler for Ethernut 3.

Using the PHAT File System
Making your MMC interface on Ethernut 3 work.

Using UDP Broadcasts
This paper presents a simple tool to discover all Ethernuts in a local network.

Partly outdated

Nut Programmable Logic
This tutorial teaches you to modify the CPLD on Ethernut 3.

MP3 Streaming
A step by step guide on how to build a stand-alone Embedded Internet Radio.

Setting up PPP
This paper provides helpful information about how to get started with Ethernut's PPP.

SAM Internet Radio
Implementing an Internet Radio on the AT91SAM9260 and AT91SAM7X Evaluation Kits.

Nut/OS Events
This paper explains Nut/OS event handling internals.

CPU and Memory Requirements

Nut/OS Threads, Events and Timers
Recommended reading for application programmers.

Nut/OS Memory Considerations
Includes a design proposal for bank switched RAM.