Zephyr OS, the new crispy operation system

19 December 2022

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IoT

On December 1st, 2022, LACROIX has organised “PizzaIoT”, an afterwork where we talk about IoT… while enjoying pizza 🍕 For this first edition, LACROIX joined forces with STMicroelectronics and NXP to host a conference on the topic of the Zephyr OS, a new operating system for microcontrollers managed by the Linux Foundation.

Between technologies, meetings and pizza… Let’s take a look back at this crispy event!

Conference held at LACROIX’s office at Cesson-Sévigné (near Rennes, France) by LACROIX, STMicroelectronics and NXP.

Zephyr OS in all its states

During the conference, the 3 speakers presented the Zephyr OS in all its facets, answering the following key questions:

How does it fit in with the industrial sector?
Why did LACROIX choose this operating system for its products?
According to STMicroelectronics and NXP, what steps are required to get started with this OS?

WATCH REPLAY “PIZZAIOT CONFERENCE #1 ZEPHYR OS” (only in french)

Zephyr at the heart of conversations

The Zephyr OS has been a hot topic for the past few years. With the rise of the IoT market, companies need an open, independent operating system. Connectivity, cybersecurity, and consumption are but a few of the numerous challenges for this open-source collaborative project.

Created in 2015, the Zephyr OS is managed by the Linux Foundation and supported by a very active community. Its development is continuously expanding in order to meet companies’ various IoT needs.

LACROIX has chosen the Zephyr OS for its new generations of IoT products.

Zephyr in the industrial sector

Right from the outset of the Zephyr project, it was designed and developed to be the benchmark RTOS for the industrial sector.

The entire industry has mandatory expectations regarding the level of quality of its software. The quality of the software is not some add-on requirement briefly mentioned in the functional safety standards. Quality is an existing prerequisite for functional safety. The Zephyr project aims to provide a version that is compliant with the most basic functional safety standard: IEC 61508. This version is currently being prepared on an auditable branch yet to be certified, in order to show its suitability for hazard severity levels up to SIL 3.

In the same vein, Zephyr strengthens secure coding practices that have been documented for the project. Zephyr is registered as a CVE Numbering Authority with CVE.ORG to document and track any vulnerabilities detected.

Get Zephyr off to a good start in 3 steps

Step #1 : Set up the environment

Go to https://docs.zephyrproject.org/ and follow the “Getting Started Guide” to set up the environnement.

Step #2 : Compile the applications

Start compiling examples of applications and run them on one of the many development platforms available via the project – there are over 400!

Step #3 : get acquainted with the tool

Get acquainted with the technologies implemented by Zephyr – CMake, DeviceTree, Kconfig, etc. Mastering these will allow you to use the many services and libraries provided by the Zephyr OS to quickly develop your IoT applications.