WebbotLib with freeRTOS

[romick]

Webbot, or anyone else, have you ever tried to use webbotlib on freeRTOS? I'm curios because i'm going to make a robot hardware-based on pololu orangutan and software-based on freeRTOS. At the moment I'm writing firmware based on freeRTOS and pololu avr libraries, but I liked a lot ideas behind your library, including it's portability between different hardware, so i'd like to use it instead of pololu avr libraries. Thanks in advance for your explanation if it is possible or not.

[Ro-Bot-X]

You may also want to take a look at DuinOS, a freeRTOS implementation for Arduino.

[romick]

Although I'm not planning to use arduino hardware in near future, I'll take a look. As for porting freeRTOS to a certain AVR chip, there are some examples foating around on web, so the task doesn't seem that hard to me. The hard question for me, if webbotlib would run in freeRTOS environment without issues. Quick google seach didn't gave any valuable results, so i'm trying to ask the author of lib himself and local comunity, if you know any examples of using the lib with freeRTOS. I would appreciate any references on the theme.

[Webbot]

Sorry but I have never tried it.

The other OS that is worth people looking at is http://www.femtoos.org/index.html
It was specifically written for AVR chips and has a very small footprint.

[dunk]

my hunch is that these 2 will not work together.
if they can be made work together then it is almost certainly a bad idea.

an OS manages process and resources. if you give a (modern) OS multiple processes to run it will cue them up and find a way to run them.
depending on the OS it might run them simultaneously by time slicing or it might run them one after the other... the point is is you give the OS the process to run and it gets on with the complicated scheduling.

WebbotLib is more than just a set of static libraries. it starts to overlap some of the tasks an OS would do. you put the processes you want to run in appControl() and WebbotLib looks after the timing.


i guess WebbotLib *could* run as a process on an OS,
or you *could* run an OS from within WebbotLib's appControl(),
but i really think you are better choosing one or the other.


dunk.

[romick]

And quick glance at femtoOS made me think it's indeed what i'm looking for.
Well, I see no contradiction between OS and the lib. I'd have divided all of robot's logic into tasks (in fact I already did) and would use freeRTOS or FemtoOS  for managing tasks and webbotlib as a framework for easy access to different hardware (servos, radars, LCD, etc). So far, in my mind, they could be integrated with ease.   

My biggest problem is lack of hardware to experiment with, as all the MCU, servos and sensors stuff I ordered will be shipped not sooner then june. (Yes, I live far from places where all the robotics fun is going on  ). Meanwhile I'll keep up experimenting with software.