Getting Started#

Integrating FreeRTOS into your application is simply a matter of installing the FreeRTOS component for the project in Simplicity Studio. The ot-ble-dmp sample application runs on FreeRTOS by default and you can add FreeRTOS to any OpenThread project. The ot-cli-ftd sample application is a good starting example.

1. In your project, double-click the .slcp file for the project in the Project Explorer to open the project window.

2. Click the SOFTWARE COMPONENTS tab to see a complete list of Component categories.

3. Find the FreeRTOS component located under RTOS > FreeRTOS in the list of components.

4. Select FreeRTOS and then click Install.

   screenshot

   This component brings all the FreeRTOS kernel files into your project, along with some integration files and some additional components it depends on.

5. Click View Dependencies to display the components.

One dependency is the CMSIS-RTOS2 component, which is an RTOS abstraction layer used by the integration files. Silicon Labs recommends that application developers use the FreeRTOS API directly rather than using the CMSIS-RTOS2 API.

Another dependency is the heap implementation used by FreeRTOS. FreeRTOS comes with five different heap implementations. Each appears as a component. By default, the FreeRTOS Heap 4 component is added to the project. You can change this by selecting a different heap component and clicking Install. For example, FreeRTOS HEAP 3 uses the system malloc() and free() implementation and is a common choice.