The project recently achieved several milestones including surpassing 80,000 commits since it was released in open source in 2015. This is an average of almost 2 commits per hour, which was made recently by 490 individuals, including 166 first-timers, who contributed to the 3.4 release. Zephyr RTOS supports over 450 boards running embedded microcontrollers from Arm and RISC-V to Tensilica, NIOS, ARC and x86 as single and multicore systems.
"The Zephyr Project brings together a diverse community of developers, engineers and experts at all levels to make an industry-supported solution they can trust for the lifecycle of their products," said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems. "Our focus on integrating key technologies and the fact that it is backed by a complete ecosystem, have made it an ideal platform for rapid time to market products."
A few products that are powered by Zephyr include:
- CuteCircuit's Soundshirt is a wearable device that brings music and media to life in a way that can be felt physically, in real-time and on the body in a tactile language unique to each piece of music, cinema, games, or VR experiences. This opens new and diverse ways of enjoying media of many kinds. Soundshirt was named one of Time's Best Inventions.
- Lilbit is a leading provider of pet trackers, which is a lightweight device that attaches to the collar and pairs with a smartphone. Lildog and Lilcat show you how your dog(s) and cat(s) are doing in their environments. Not only do they track location in real time, but they also check temperature, sleep patterns, activity level and eating habits.
- SODAQ TRACK Solar is an innovative asset tracking device, specifically engineered to withstand demanding industrial environments. This device is designed to provide a wide range of readings and data points, making it easier for you to connect assets online and manage them effectively. With TRACK Solar, you are in control of your supply chain. Its use cases include Ground Support Equipment and Unit Load Devices.
A Growing Community
Zephyr RTOS has a growing set of software libraries that can be used across various applications and industry sectors such as Industrial IoT, wearables, machine learning and more. It is built with an emphasis on broad chipset support, security, dependability, long-term support releases and a growing open source ecosystem.
ADI joins other Platinum members including Antmicro, Baumer, Google, Intel, Meta, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP, Oticon, Qualcomm Innovation Center and T-Mobile. Rob Oshana, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Solutions at ADI, will join the Governing Board.
"At ADI, we are proud to support the Zephyr Project and join the vibrant ecosystem they have cultivated," said Rob Oshana, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Solutions at ADI. "Embedded software plays a pivotal role in delivering industry-leading digital products to our customer base, which exceeds 125,000 across new and emerging markets. By contributing to Zephyr, we continue to show our commitment to the open source community and to our customers."
Arduino and TII join AVSystem, BayLibre, Blues, Golioth, Infineon, IRNAS, Laird Connectivity, Linaro, Memfault, Parasoft, Percepio, SiFive, Silicon Labs, Sternum, Synopsys, Texas Instruments and Wind River as Silver members.
"Arduino is proud to support the Zephyr Project and join the remarkable community," said Fabio Violante, CEO of Arduino. "It has been exciting to watch the project emerge as a powerful open source RTOS. We believe that Zephyr OS is a truly special project that will play a significant role in the Arduino ecosystem and will be a big priority for us."
"The Technology Innovation Institute's strategic collaboration with Zephyr RTOS is a significant stride towards our mission of developing innovative, secure, and resilient embedded systems and networks," said Dr. Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar, Chief Research Officer at the Secure Systems Research Center at TII. "We tackle challenges such as vulnerability testing in real-world environments, runtime assurance, and meeting power and performance requirements and are dedicated to developing a zero-trust-based, secure, resilient, and autonomous system for embedded network interactions. By joining the Zephyr Project, we aim to weave a robust security layer into vital software components."
The 3.4. Release
This new release is a testimony to Zephyr's increased adoption for a wide range of applications. Several companies are already using Zephyr for building embedded controllers—microcontroller-powered applications that support a computer in handling low-level system tasks—and some of the enhancements in 3.4 are helping streamline efforts in this area. For example, Zephyr 3.4 is adding new APIs and driver implementations to interact with NVMe disks, SMBus peripherals, and real-time clocks in a uniform way.
Zephyr 3.4 also introduces several improvements to its built-in testing framework (Twister) that make it possible to write more comprehensive tests than in previous versions. Developers can now use popular third-party testing frameworks such as pyTest, GoogleTest, and RobotFramework to write end-to-end tests running on real or emulated hardware, and potentially connecting to e.g. IoT servers.
Support for 30+ new boards has been added, including: BeagleBoard Freedom Connect, Arduino GIGA R1, or Wio Terminal, and dozens of new drivers have also been added, from environmental sensors to audio DSPs and on-board SoC peripherals. Learn more on the Zephyr blog.
Zephyr Developer Summit
The Zephyr community will be at the Zephyr Developer Summit, which takes place on June 27-30 in Prague, Czech Republic, and virtually as part of the first-ever Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS). Launched in 2021, the annual Zephyr Developer Summit is for developers using or considering Zephyr RTOS in embedded products. While the in-person attendance has sold out, it is still possible to register virtually and attend one of the 75+ sessions focused on Zephyr's technical details, products that leverage the RTOS and the ecosystem. Check out the complete schedule here.
Virtual attendance costs US $50. Register here.
Embedded
Open Source Summit could not be possible without the support of all of the
sponsors . The Zephyr Project would like to specifically thank
member companies such as Antmicro, Google, Intel and Meta for being Diamond sponsors; Blues and NXP for being Gold sponsors; Analog Devices and Nordic Semiconductor for being Silver sponsors; and AVSystem, Golioth, Memfault and Sternum for being Bronze sponsors.
