Wind River Rocket is strong

Original author: M. Tim J.
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Wind River Rocket is a free, scalable, real-time operating system that can run on many hardware platforms. It is designed for use in IoT devices. Development for Rocket is driven by an innovative cloud environment, Wind River Helix, which makes it easy to build, test, and deploy applications. Today we will talk about the possibilities that Helix opens up for everyone who decides to make Rocket the foundation of their project.





How Wind River Rocket is Designed


Rocket is the best-of-breed real-time operating system (RTOS) designed for the Internet of things. But Rocket is not only strong with this. It is integrated into the ecosystem of cloud tools that simplify development and allow you to bring a project from an idea to a finished commercial product.


Cloud ecosystem Wind River Rocket

The Rocket ecosystem consists of four components, shown in the diagram. Consider these components in more detail.

  • Rocket real-time operating system . At the very center of the circuit is an IoT application written for Rocket. The OS is based on the Zephyr microkernel. This is a stable, multi-threaded core, which, on the one hand, takes up little space, and on the other hand, supports many services and is able to interact with a developed ecosystem of services. Rocket does not depend on the hardware architecture, it can work on many platforms, for example, on the Intel Galileo Gen 2 board. Rocket pays great attention to security, it supports a wide range of relevant protocols.

  • App Cloud Development Environment . App Cloud simplifies the life of IoT application programmers. Using this cloud environment, you can create smart device firmware using a web browser. The App Cloud provides an advanced IDE, but thanks to the cloud architecture, you can use it wherever there is Internet access.

  • Test environment for Lab Cloud applications . The App Cloud development environment is integrated with Lab Cloud, a virtualized hardware environment that can be used to test IoT applications. After the application is compiled and connected to the Rocket in the App Cloud, it can be downloaded to the virtual target device in Lab Cloud and run. At the same time, the results of the application can be viewed in the App Cloud. All debugging features that you can expect from an application testing environment are available here. In particular, this is setting breakpoints and step-by-step code execution. At the same time, Lab Cloud pays special attention to the high performance of the debugging environment and the capabilities of team development.

  • A secure deployment environment for Device Cloud applications . When the project reaches the deployment stage, you can use the Device Cloud system to automate this process. This is a cloud platform that allows you to install applications on multiple devices. At the same time, these devices are securely connected to the corporate network. Device Cloud allows you to control remote IoT devices with Rocket installed, and at the same time, it protects data collected from these devices for centralized analysis. Device Cloud also helps solve the problem of remote application updates. Even in cases where thousands of devices need updating.

The figure below shows how a test application developed in App Cloud runs on a virtual device in Lab Cloud. In this case, this is the Intel Quark x86 QEMU emulator. The black window in the center is the source code editor. Thanks to the tab system, the editor allows you to work with several files, arranging windows with code in a way convenient for the developer. In the upper right corner of the window you can see the inscription "TestDevice". In our case, it refers to a virtual device “built” on the x86 platform. A green dot indicates that the device is connected and ready for use. The list of files with the code included in the project is on the left, the debugger panel on the right. And finally, below the window with the code editor is the data output area. Here you can find information about the assembly of the application that runs on the virtual device,


Wind River Helix App Cloud - an IDE that requires only a web browser

Strengths of Rocket


Talk about the benefits of developing, testing and deploying applications for Rocket using Helix Cloud Apps.

- Rocket: real-time OS


In Rocket RTOS, everything is aimed at supporting IoT applications. Here you can find preemptive, priority-based tasks, and non-preemptive fibers (lightweight threads for performing actions that require performance). The OS also supports a rich set of communication services, such as message queues and byte streams. The organization of tasks and fibers in an application is handled by synchronization services. In addition, RTOS supports power-saving operation in which the CPU is not polled by the internal timer. This allows you to reduce the power consumption of IoT devices, which means that for those of them that are in hard-to-reach places and work from their own energy source, increase the life time from one set of batteries.

Rocket is highly configurable, in the minimum version it takes up only 4 KB of memory. The OS provides developers with a stable environment for hardware IoT solutions, such as wearable devices, industrial controllers, and devices with limited computing resources.

- Wind River Helix App Cloud: development


App Cloud makes it easy to build applications, it provides the developer with a pre-configured IDE and tools designed for the right hardware. Instead of first installing development tools, then tuning, ensuring the normal collaboration of various subsystems, thanks to the App Cloud, you can, without extra effort, get everything you need to get started right away. These are, for example, boot images, SDKs, Rocket OSs, application compilation tools, debuggers for various architectures (the necessary debugger is automatically selected based on the target device used). App Cloud can be deployed according to the needs of the developer. So, the basis for it can be a public server (for example, like Amazon Web Services), it can be a company’s own server or a virtual private cloud.

- Wind River Helix Lab Cloud: testing


Lab Cloud is tightly integrated with the App Cloud. This allows you to run and test IoT applications on virtual devices. Work with Lab Cloud is carried out through a web browser, it supports many hardware platforms. As a result, with this tool you can quickly and conveniently test Rocket IoT applications designed for different devices. In addition, Lab Cloud is designed for joint development, and thanks to the savings from using virtual devices instead of their hardware implementations, this application testing environment is equally effective in teams of various sizes. When everything is ready, the same images that were tested in Lab Cloud can be flashed to physical devices without the need for any additional configuration.

- Wind River Helix Device Cloud: Deployment


Thanks to Device Cloud, the physical devices on which you plan to deploy applications can be easily and safely connected to a single control panel. As a cloud platform, Device Cloud is an integrated set of services that covers a wide range of IoT devices, in particular, Intel's Internet of Things gateways. At the same time, any work with Device Cloud does not require additional software. Everything you need is accessible through a browser.

Summary


Intel and Wind River (Intel owns this company) provide an environment that fully covers the life cycle of IoT applications. App Cloud provides the opportunity for joint development of projects thanks to the browser-based IDE, for which you need only an Internet connection. Lab Cloud simplifies testing tasks using various virtual devices, it is easily scalable, and allows you to run and debug applications in a cloud environment. When the project is ready for release, Device Cloud helps automate the installation of applications on hundreds or even thousands of devices. At the same time, the system provides safe access to devices and secure data transfer. Including - remote update of device firmware is supported. At the center of this entire ecosystem is Rocket, which is independent of the hardware of the real-time OS. On the one hand, it simplifies development, and on the other, it is fully integrated into the best-in-class cloud services suite.

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