There's something really satisfying about turning theory into practice, bringing with it a great feeling of accomplishment. Moreover it usually deepens and solidifies your understanding of the theoretical aspects of the subject, while at the same time eliminating misconceptions and misunderstandings. So it's not surprising that the the fundamental philosophy of this book is that 'theory is best understood by putting it into practice'. Well, that's fine as it stands. Unfortunately the practice may a bit more challenging, especially in the field of real-time operating systems. First, you need a sensible, practical toolset on which to carry out the work. Second, for many self-learners, cost is an issue; the tools mustn't be expensive. Third, they mustn't be difficult to get, use and maintain. So what we have here is our approach to providing you with a low cost toolset for RTOS experimentation.The toolset used for this work consists of: A graphical tool for configuring microcontrollers (specifically STM32F variants) - STM32CubeMX software application.An Integrated Development Environment for the production of machine code.A very low cost single board computer with inbuilt programmer and debuggerAll software, which is free, can be run on Windows, OSX or Linux platforms. The Discovery kit is readily available from many electronic suppliers. The RTOS used for this work is FreeRTOS, which is integrated with the CubeMX tool. Now for a word of caution and advice. If you want to learn about the fundamentals of Real-Time Operating Systems, this is not the book for you. For that you need to study the material contained in Book 1 (or an equivalent textbook). This book assumes that you are fully conversant with that level of theory.The author: Jim Cooling has had many years experience in the area of real-time embedded systems, including electronic, software and system design, project management, consultancy, education and course development. He has published extensively on the subject, his books covering many aspects of embedded-systems work such as real-time interfacing, programming, software design and software engineering. Currently he is a partner in Lindentree Associates (which he formed in 1998), providing consultancy and training for real-time embedded systems.See: www.lindentreeuk.co.uk
