Hello everyone. I'm thinking about developing a peripherals library (severar libraries, in fact) with a common API for a variety of microcontrollers from different manufacturers and architectures. I think this would be useful to reduce the time that a user needs to adapt to the use of a different microcontroller and to facilitate porting an application made for a type of microcontroller to another (especially if it's from a different manufacturer). I would like to know your opinion about this idea. Do you think that would be really helpful to have something like that? Thank you very much in advance. Victor
There are already plenty of such libraries, written as drivers and included in RTOS such as Chibi/OS and FreeRTOS.
In my opinion, as I'm based on the field of automotive software engineering, you seem to have the idea to develope something like what (OSEK and especially) AUTOSAR tries to achieve in the automotive ECU environment. So you try to sepertate system relevant functions from the hardware/communication systems actually used. That is, respecting the goals you want to achieve, a really good idea indeed. The problem is the amount of developement it takes. In AUTOSAR e.g., every µc-distributor is paid quite well, just to release the micro controller abstraction layer (mcal) meeting AUTOSSAR specifications for their controllers. In respect to the amount you've got to pay for a controller that meet the system requirements(regarding RAM and Flash memory sizes), you need to run the AUTOSAR RTOS, and the costs of the distribution of those mcals, there's actually no benefit or break even point for developing such ECUs nowadays, although AUTOSAR development started about over ten years ago, about in the year 2002. Having a strong community behind you, helping to develope such a RTOS-standard, is absolutely necessary as this is no one man job. The experiences I made on this forum is that you have a lot of different people preferring not only their most likely programming language (as c, assembler, arduino e.g.) but also µC manufacturers (Atmel, PIC, MSP,...) Maybe you want to have a look / google search in respect to AUTOSAR to get a point of view of regarding the ressources such a developement takes for a commercial product. I myself (as I think many others) would appreciate it to write a program in my universal IDE and then just compile it to the contoller I've got lying on my table, using an universal e.g. JTAG-programmer. I don't think, I might get to know this day, regarding the obstacles lying in the way, but please try to achieve your best. phischu
phischu, thank you very much for your great response. Although I had sought if there were similar projects, I did not know the AUTOSAR standard. The extension and quality of the information that you have provided is very valuable for me. My idea is not as ambitious as the complete AUTOSAR standard. It's impossible for me to reach this level of complexity in a reasonable time. My idea would be limited to something like the part of AUTOSAR that deals with de abstraction of the microcontroller peripherals. At this time, each manufacturer of microcontrollers (NXP, ST, TI, Atmel) provides a library for its own peripherals with its own API. It would only unify this field. It's very true what you say that the users of microcontrollers are very devoted to specific brands. Perhaps the idea of providing a common API would not have intrest for them. Thank you again. Victor
Hello Victor, I like your idea because I had same idea. When I was student, I begun to write a library compatible with pic24 and msp430 microcontrollers. I'm working on this project since 3 years. It's a lot of work and require a lot of time. Working alone on this project is not possible. Since 2 year, I'm working and I don't have a lot of time to work on this project. For these reason, I think about publishing source code under LGPL, and I'm expecting get contribution from another people (like you ??). Contact me if you want more details. Regard, Anobli
3 years ago, I made a proposal to develop a general API for microcontrollers: Beitrag "BIOS für Mikrocontroller" Unfortunately the response in this forum was not very promising.
Unfortunately I don't understand dutch. I use google translate but translation is sometime weird. I summarize (correct me if I'm wrong), you have proposed an API for microcontroller. Most people reject API because: - difficult to configure - memory footprint - reliability - performance
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