Embedded Linux Development

HRDC Reg. No: 10001704643
Duration: 21 hours (3 days)

Course Overview

FreeRTOS helps embedded engineers move from bare-metal programming to structured real-time firmware development. Participants will learn task scheduling, memory management, synchronization, inter-task communication, interrupt handling, and debugging techniques needed to build responsive, scalable, deterministic, and maintainable embedded systems.

Many embedded engineers understand microcontrollers and bare-metal programming. But when systems become more complex, they struggle with:

• Managing multiple functionalities simultaneously
• Handling timing-critical operations reliably
• Avoiding blocking and inefficient polling
• Designing responsive firmware architectures
• Synchronizing tasks safely without race conditions
• Handling interrupts alongside task scheduling
• Debugging concurrency-related issues

As a result, many developers:

• Build monolithic firmware that becomes difficult to scale
• Face unpredictable timing behavior
• Encounter deadlocks, race conditions, and priority inversion problems
• Struggle to design maintainable real-time systems

This program is designed to solve these challenges through a practical and implementation-driven approach using FreeRTOS. Instead of learning RTOS concepts in isolation, participants will progressively build and analyze real-time firmware systems while understanding how FreeRTOS manages:

• Tasks and scheduling
• Timing and responsiveness
• Memory management
• Synchronization and resource sharing
• Inter-task communication
• Interrupt-driven execution

The course focuses heavily on:

• Understanding why RTOS mechanisms are needed
• Analyzing real-world concurrency issues
• Implementing efficient communication between tasks
• Designing interrupt-safe firmware
• Debugging timing and synchronization problems

Through guided exercises and real-world case studies, participants will gain the ability to design firmware that is:

• Responsive
• Scalable
• Deterministic
• Maintainable

By the end of the program, participants will move from “I know FreeRTOS APIs” to “I can design and build reliable real-time embedded systems using FreeRTOS.”

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

RTOS & Real-Time Fundamentals

• Explain the need for RTOS in embedded systems
• Differentiate between GPOS and RTOS architectures
• Understand real-time constraints and scheduling behavior

Task Management & Scheduling

• Create, manage, and schedule FreeRTOS tasks
• Understand task states, priorities, and context switching
• Design responsive task-based firmware architectures

Memory Management

• Understand FreeRTOS memory management techniques
• Analyze stack and heap usage
• Detect and debug stack overflow conditions

Synchronization & Resource Protection

• Use mutexes and critical sections appropriately
• Analyze and resolve race conditions
• Handle priority inversion using proper synchronization mechanisms

Inter-Task Communication

• Design communication between tasks using:
  • Queues
  • Semaphores
  • Event groups
  • Task notifications
  • Message buffers
• Build event-driven RTOS applications

Interrupt Handling in RTOS

• Write interrupt-safe firmware using FreeRTOS APIs
• Synchronize interrupts with tasks effectively
• Implement deferred interrupt processing mechanisms

System-Level Capability

• Build scalable RTOS-based embedded applications
• Design responsive and deterministic firmware systems
• Transition from bare-metal programming to structured RTOS development

Prerequisites

Participants should have:

• Good Embedded C programming knowledge

Teaching Methodology

• Instructor-led RTOS concepts
• Hands-on FreeRTOS labs
• Task scheduling exercises
• Synchronization case studies
• Interrupt handling practice

Target Audience

• Embedded software engineers
• Firmware developers
• Microcontroller programmers
• RTOS beginners
• IoT device developers

Target Industry

• Embedded Systems
• IoT and Smart Devices
• Automotive Electronics
• Industrial Automation
• Consumer Electronics