Hello all, We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 microcontroller (NXP). The target application is for proffesional use which sets high requirements for reliability. The product is very cost-sensitive which has made us looking for freeware alternatives to the commercial/proffessional RTOS and TCP/IP stacks. We are currently considering: http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/ http://www.freertos.org/embeddedtcp.html Any comments on these ? Does any of you know of other high quality freeware (preferably well documented) or maybe have some proffessional experience with some of the freeware sources available on the web ? Thanks in advance Best Regards Morten M. J�rgensen.
Reliable freeware (RTOS and TCP/IP) for ARM7
Started by ●June 12, 2007
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit Morten M J�rgensen wrote:>We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 microcontroller >(NXP). The target application is for proffesional use which sets high >requirements for reliability. The product is very cost-sensitive which has >made us looking for freeware alternatives to the commercial/proffessional >RTOS and TCP/IP stacks.Two comments: [1] Once you get down to the short list, the one with the best documentation is likely to be the highest quality as well. Not always, but that's the way to bet. [2] Don't rule out commercial products. Look for something with a fixed fee for the system and no per-unit fee for the target systems. If your product is high volume the per-unit cost will be low. (and if you are making a low-volume cost-sensitive product, you aren't counting the development costs properly). -- Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
On 2007-06-12, Morten M J�rgensen <neax@fake.mail.com> wrote:> We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 microcontroller > (NXP).I've been using eCos for many years on ARM7 with good results: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! I brought my BOWLING at BALL -- and some DRUGS!! visi.com
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
Morten M J�rgensen wrote:> Hello all, > > We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 microcontroller > (NXP). The target application is for proffesional use which sets high > requirements for reliability. The product is very cost-sensitive which has > made us looking for freeware alternatives to the commercial/proffessional > RTOS and TCP/IP stacks. >Be careful with the term "freeware", which is not very well defined, and covers a broad spectrum of zero purchase price licenses. What you are probably looking for is some sort of open source solution, and you should be aware that these often come with restrictions of some sort. For example, FreeRTOS is available as open source, but has the restriction that any changes you make to the FreeRTOS software must be made available to your customers (but not any software of your own, even if it is linked together). These are, of course, perfectly fair and reasonable terms, and there is also a commercial license available if you don't want to make your changes available (but of course, that costs money, albeit not much). Open source is often the right choice, all other things being equal, but the main benefits are in the freedoms it gives you rather than the purchase cost price, and if you are just out looking for freebies, you've missed the point.> We are currently considering: > > http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/ > > http://www.freertos.org/embeddedtcp.html > > > Any comments on these ? >I haven't used either of these myself, but I've heard many good things about them. I've no reason to suspect they are not at least as good as any commercial alternatives with the same feature set. But again, you should chose these with the understanding of what the open source licenses give you, and what they ask of you. As another poster has said, if your volumes are high (and if they are not, then why are you so price-conscious?), then many commercial systems have very low or free per-unit prices, and the cost of purchase can be considered part of the development costs. It's up to you to examine the choices, and consider the entire costs - if a commercial OS will save a month of a developers time, then it will quickly pay for itself. Of course, there is absolutely no reason to suspect that a given commercial tool *will* save you time - it could just as easily cost you more time. Other things to look at are things like support (if you are not paying anything, you can't expect more than mailing-list support - but it can be far better to get good email answers directly from the developers and users than a badly implemented commercial support telephone hotline). Also look at installation (sometimes open source products require a bit more thought during installation, rather than a point-and-drool "wizard"), and installation licenses (with open source, you can install what you like, where you like - commercial systems often require battles with dongles, MAC addresses, registration, and so on). And with open source software, you don't need run-time licenses - even if a commercial system has very low costs for such licenses, management of them can be a bureaucratic complication.> Does any of you know of other high quality freeware (preferably well > documented) or maybe have some proffessional experience with some of the > freeware sources available on the web ? > > Thanks in advance > > Best Regards > > Morten M. J�rgensen. > >
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
Don't confuse the IP stack and the RTOS. These are often joined at the hip, but sometimes one RTOS can use different IP stacks. The uIP stack is very lightweight and slow: http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/ lwIP seems to be a little richer, but it takes more RAM and flash: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lwip uC/OS II is a possible alternative to FreeRTOS. It's not open source but is very cheap. http://www.micrium.com/products/rtos/kernel/rtos.html Comercially, Interniche and CMX offer great stacks. eCOS seems a little fat for my meager requirements. Maybe others here can point out some tutorial web pages to help people get up to speed with it. Eric
Reply by ●June 12, 20072007-06-12
"Morten M J�rgensen" wrote:> > We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 > microcontroller (NXP). The target application is for proffesional > use which sets high requirements for reliability. The product is > very cost-sensitive which has made us looking for freeware > alternatives to the commercial/proffessional RTOS and TCP/IP stacks.There is lots of it out there, but most of it is released under GPL. This means that you will have to contact the originator to use it in commercial systems. Most of my releases are in portable standard C, and should port anywhere. See: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net/download/> -- <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt> <http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423> <http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html> <http://kadaitcha.cx/vista/dogsbreakfast/index.html> cbfalconer at maineline dot net -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Reply by ●June 13, 20072007-06-13
Thanks allot for all your replies - great help! We have not totally discarded the possibility of commercial products. RTX RealTime Kernel and TCP/IP from Keil are under consideration - any commets on this choice? "Morten M J�rgensen" <neax@fake.mail.com> skrev i en meddelelse news:466e4f20$0$178$edfadb0f@dread11.news.tele.dk...> Hello all, > > We are looking for very reliable freeware for the ARM7 microcontroller > (NXP). The target application is for proffesional use which sets high > requirements for reliability. The product is very cost-sensitive which has > made us looking for freeware alternatives to the commercial/proffessional > RTOS and TCP/IP stacks. > > We are currently considering: > > http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/ > > http://www.freertos.org/embeddedtcp.html > > > Any comments on these ? > > Does any of you know of other high quality freeware (preferably well > documented) or maybe have some proffessional experience with some of the > freeware sources available on the web ? > > Thanks in advance > > Best Regards > > Morten M. J�rgensen. >
Reply by ●June 13, 20072007-06-13
Eric wrote:> uC/OS II is a possible alternative to FreeRTOS. It's not open source > but is very cheap.Unless they've changed their pricing structure, their price for commercial applications ($1200 per application) is not particularly cheap.
Reply by ●June 13, 20072007-06-13
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 13:10:15 -0700, Eric wrote:> uC/OS II is a possible alternative to FreeRTOS. It's not open source but > is very cheap. > http://www.micrium.com/products/rtos/kernel/rtos.html >Its cheap to buy the book to get the source to have a play, but what are the commercial product licencing fees like?
