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Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

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Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#91

Post by yaantc »

nicolas314 wrote: post #77
amq wrote: post #65

How does it compare to mbed-os?

Mbed OS supports a much wider range of boards and controllers: https://os.mbed.com/platforms/

mbed is only for ARM based systems (license limitation, not technology related), and in the embedded world there's much more than ARM.

FreeRTOS is easy to use on any and all CPU architectures, and is much more common. Actually, FreeRTOS is the most popular RTOS in the embedded world with Linux, and uptrending (see https://m.eet.com/media/1246048/2017-embedded-market-study.p... slides 62/63). This is a survey of professional embedded developers, not newcomers. Notice than mbed doesn't even show up. My feel is that mbed can be attractive to newcomers in embedded (easiness), but has not (yet?) much traction with people already doing embedded dev.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#92

Post by brutus1213 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #76
Rebelgecko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They list 4 dev boards on their website, from Microchip, NXP, STM and TI. With the exception of the PIC from microchip it looks like they are all ARM based. Will be exciting to see if the ESP 32 becomes supported, since it already supports regular FreeRTOS

And they already habe AWS IoT support in their SDK.

I'm curious if there are commercial deployments on these types of IoT platforms? Last time I looked, it all seemed like devkits and examples and such. One project I was following - mbed from ARM - it is quite unclear if it ever made it beyond hobbyist/prototyping usage.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#93

Post by nicolas314 »

yaantc wrote: post #91
nicolas314 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mbed OS supports a much wider range of boards and controllers: https://os.mbed.com/platforms/

mbed is only for ARM based systems (license limitation, not technology related), and in the embedded world there's much more than ARM. FreeRTOS is easy to use on any and all CPU architectures, and is much more common. Actually, FreeRTOS is the most popular RTOS in the embedded world with Linux, and uptrending (see https://m.eet.com/media/1246048/2017-embedded-market-study.p... slides 62/63). This is a survey of profe…

Good point: Mbed OS is only for ARM-based processors. The main difference lies in the vast number of drivers it offers, which is the reason why you already have 100+ supported boards today. In comparison, FreeRTOS would run on any MPU but without drivers you won't go far.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#94

Post by foobard »

sigstoat wrote: post #67
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #39

>Amazon FreeRTOS ... and extends it with software libraries that make it easy to securely connect your small, low-power devices to AWS cloud services why do IoT devices have to connect to the cloud? Is there any legitimate use case other than reporting data gathered on the customer? Why do have all these gadgets have to snoop on us?

> why do IoT devices have to connect to the cloud? to allow a "secure" connection (plus all the snooping and reporting). as near as i can tell, there's no way to concoct a device to run on a home network which an average consumer's browser will be happy talking SSL to. (if anyone knows a way i'd love to hear it.)

Lets Encrypt is adding wildcard support in 2018

https://letsencrypt.org/2017/07/06/wildcard-certificates-com...

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#95

Post by sigstoat »

foobard wrote: post #94
sigstoat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do IoT devices have to connect to the cloud? to allow a "secure" connection (plus all the snooping and reporting). as near as i can tell, there's no way to concoct a device to run on a home network which an average consumer's browser will be happy talking SSL to. (if anyone knows a way i'd love to hear it.)

Lets Encrypt is adding wildcard support in 2018 https://letsencrypt.org/2017/07/06/wildcard-certificates-com...

i don't see how that helps. what wildcard pattern are you thinking will be useful, and issuable?

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#96

Post by notatoad »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #80
notatoad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do internet of things devices have to connect to the internet? Because that's the whole definition of them. Without an internet connection, it's just a thing.

devices could be connected on a home network, without calling home.

they could, but again: then they aren't an internet-of-things device. They could do cool things, but without an internet connection it's not IoT. And the internet connection is the selling feature for most IoT devices.

I can turn my dumb non-internet connected thermostat up if i'm at home, the interesting thing about a Nest is that i can turn up the thermostat before i leave work and the house will be warm when i get home. The internet connection is the value-add. If you don't like internet connected devices that's cool, but IoT devices can't have the same feature set if you remove the internet connection. the call-home is not useless. If you want to argue that certain devices don't need an internet connection, that's fine. and in many cases i'd agree. but arguing that the whole class of devices that is defined by being connected to the internet doesn't need an internet connection is pretty silly.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#97

Post by InitialLastName »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #59
hoodoof wrote: post #47

My money is on Linux based RTOS platforms. It's a bit of a surprise that Amazon has backed a non-Linux horse in this race.

Linux is totally unsuitable for the vast majority of microcontroller tasks. It has way too much overhead, requires a 32-bit CPU with MMU (or a very slow emulator like Dmitry Grinberg made[1], but that takes 6 hours to boot.) Microcontrollers that FreeRTOS is used on are very often 8-bit or 16-bit jobs, and even the 32-bit ones often lack an MMU. Linux on a micro is like trying to go to the corner store to get beer in…

Since linux also fundamentally has non-deterministic timing, which makes it incapable of doing what people want microcontrollers to do, you can replace C5 galaxy transport aircraft with a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. It can't even get to your corner store without converting the street into a canal.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#98

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

notatoad wrote: post #96
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

devices could be connected on a home network, without calling home.

they could, but again: then they aren't an internet-of-things device. They could do cool things, but without an internet connection it's not IoT. And the internet connection is the selling feature for most IoT devices. I can turn my dumb non-internet connected thermostat up if i'm at home, the interesting thing about a Nest is that i can turn up the thermostat before i leave work and the house will be warm when i get…

If you want to turn on the thermostat from work then it does not need to connect to the cloud, also it would be safer not to expose the thermostat directly to the net - have a more secured control server on your local home network and have that one call the thermostat.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#99

Post by recursor »

sigstoat wrote: post #95
foobard wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets Encrypt is adding wildcard support in 2018 https://letsencrypt.org/2017/07/06/wildcard-certificates-com...

i don't see how that helps. what wildcard pattern are you thinking will be useful, and issuable?

Not a wildcard solution (or a particularly legit one or one a serious vendor is going to take up, but could work for DIY):

DNS poison within LAN (or proper internal DNS, or even HOSTS if DIY) for .product.tld Product initiates letsEncrypt for: uid.product.tld And posts some form of identity proof to vendor, setting up a link to carry out letsEncrypt challenges.

Verification negotiated between letsEncrypt and the vendor via public resolution of uid.product.tld

Device completes cert process with letsEncrypt and installs cert to the device.

LAN now has TLS to uid.device.tld internally (via DNS spoof/poinon) and vendor hasn't seen the cert. (but, if not DIY, the vendor is distributing a DNS poisoner in their product)

() Caveat: I've still not set up letsEncrypt in the wild, so don't know it's limitations, but from the doc's the above looks doable.

The lack of ability to have a browser TLS to *.local without an internal CA or non-public root and the endpoint management to goes with either is a pain.

Re: Amazon FreeRTOS – IoT operating system for microcontrollers

#100

Post by recursor »

patja wrote: post #42
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #39

>Amazon FreeRTOS ... and extends it with software libraries that make it easy to securely connect your small, low-power devices to AWS cloud services why do IoT devices have to connect to the cloud? Is there any legitimate use case other than reporting data gathered on the customer? Why do have all these gadgets have to snoop on us?

When I think of IoT I think of devices gathering data, and the data has to go somewhere to be useful. What's the alternative to putting it in the cloud, self-hosting the storage? That's what I would do, but I think it is a pretty niche market who wants to deal with the storage, backing it up, etc.

IMHO the apps should be storage agnostic, with setup including choosing storage (possibly including paid plans).

Meditating that through a standardised storage connector would mean the IoT apps have very little to do.

That could be something like SFTP, but there are some interesting things like https://remotestorage.io/ that allow you to write your own storage provider so decentralised apps can choose their own data store/change storage later without changing the app.

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