Apache Mynewt – A real-time operating system

18th January 2019 Harshvardhan Mishra

Apache Mynewt is a real-time operating system with a rich set of libraries intended to make prototyping, deploying, and managing 32-bit microcontroller based IoT devices easy that must operate for long times under power, memory, and storage constraints. It is highly composable, to allow building embedded system applications (e.g., locks, medical devices, industrial IoT) across different types of microcontrollers. The name Mynewt is wordplay on the English word minute, meaning very small: the kernel is only 6 KB in size. It is free and open-source software incubating under the Apache Software Foundation, with source code distributed under the Apache License 2.0, a permissive license that is conducive to commercial adoption of open-source software.

The OS is designed for connectivity, and comes with a full implementation of the Bluetooth low energy 4.2 stack. With the addition of BLE (supporting all Bluetooth 4.2 compliant security features except privacy) and various utilities such as the default file system, console, shell, logs, stats, etc., the image size is approximately 96 KB for the Nordic nRF51822 Bluetooth SoC. This size metric excludes the boot loader image.

Key points

Built for wireless – Meet your application’s demands from a choice of open source networking stacks e.g. Bluetooth Low Energy 5, Bluetooth Mesh, Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, and more…
Security from the start – Ensure security is built into the code as well as lifecycle management for your product.
Operations ready – Ready your IoT network of billions for remote monitoring, troubleshooting, management, and upgrade.
Cross-platform – Pick one MCU now. Migrate to another later.Easy to use – Compose, fine-tune, and build your image within hours or even minutes.

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Features

Real-time operating system kernel (Mynewt OS)
Bluetooth Low Energy stack (BLE 5) – choose HOST only or CONTROLLER only or FULL stack.
Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh
Command line package management and build system (Newt Tool)
Hardware Abstraction Layer unifying common MCU features
Board Support Infrastructure
System level logs and statistics
Secure bootloader, signed images and remote firmware upgrade
Flash circular buffers, Newtron Flash File System (nffs), or hook up any other file system
Serial upgrade of bootloader
WiFi support via socket interface

Supported Boards :

nRF52 DK from Nordic Semiconductor (Cortex-M4)
nRF52840 Preview DK from Nordic Semiconductor (Cortex-M4)
nRF51 DK from Nordic Semiconductor (Cortex-M0)
VBLUno51 and VBLUno52 boards from VNG IoT Lab (Cortex-M0)
RuuviTag Sensor beacon platform (Nordic nRF52832 based)
BLE Nano from RedBear (Nordic nRF51822 SoC based)
BLE Nano2 and Blend2 from RedBear (Nordic nRF52832 SoC based)
BMD-300-EVAL-ES from Rigado (Cortex-M4)
STM32F4DISCOVERY from ST Micro (Cortex-M4)
STM32-E407 from Olimex (Cortex-M4)
Arduino Zero (Cortex-M0)
Arduino Zero Pro (Cortex-M0)
Arduino M0 Pro (Cortex-M0)
NUCLEO-F401RE (Cortex-M4)
NUCLEO-F767ZI (Cortex-M7)
Discovery kit for STM32F7 Series (Cortex-M7)
FRDM-K64F from NXP (Cortex-M4)
Creator Ci40 IoT Kit from Imagination Technologies (MIPS CPU)
BBC micro:bit with Nordic nRF51822 (Cortex-M0)
Adafruit Feather with Nordic nRF52 (Cortex-M4)
HiFive1 Dev Kit featuring the Freedom E310 from SiFive from (RISC-V)
6LoWPAN Clicker from MikroElektronika (PIC32MX)
chipKIT Wi-FIRE from Digilent (PIC32MZ)
NINA-B1 BLE module from u-blox (Cortex-M4)
Calliope Mini from Calliope gGmbH
EE-02 and EE-04 boards with Semtech Sx1276 LoRa chip from Telenor Digital (Cortex-M4)
Apollo2 Ultra-Low Power Microcontroller from Ambiq Micro (Cortex-M4)