Oberon RTK

Oberon Real-time Kernel for Cortex-M series of microcontrollers.

Purpose

Oberon RTK is a framework for writing multi-threaded embedded control programs in Oberon for Cortex-M series of microcontrollers, using Astrobe’s cross-compilers and linkers.

Oberon RTK provides embedded multi-threading kernels allowing to program, the control program as set of separate processes.

The framework and tools currently support the RP2350 and RP2350 of Raspberry Pi, as well as the STM32U585 and STM32H573 of ST Microelectronics. There is some support for microcontrollers of NXP Semiconductors.

Audience

This site is targeted at programmers with a good understanding of microcontrollers, as well as writing control software in general. Oh, and some sense of exploring. There are no Getting Started instructions, and no tutorials as of now.

There are example programs, though. Also, some example program descriptions contain a good amount of conceptual material and design considerations, which are explored in the corresponding program itself, complemented by the design considerations section. And of course there’s the source code in the repository.

The modules in the repository are provided “as is”, with the assumption that the reader knows how to build and upload the software using the tools as outlined below. The Tools section has some information about configuring Astrobe, and the Examples section about setting up the serial host connections, and building the programs.

This site may not be completely up-to-date, or complete, with respect to the modules and tools in the repository. Refer to the latter for the actual details and specifics. As the saying goes: “Debug only code, don’t get suckered in by comments.” Or by websites.

The Framework Module Library

See Oberon Modules for an overview of what’s available.

Tools

Astrobe

The Oberon RTK framework is being developed using the Astrobe series of compilers and linkers.

The framework is targeted at, and tested with:

Astrobe for RP2350:

RP2350: Cortex-M33, ARMv8-M, Pico 2 board, Pico2-Ice board
STM32U585: Cortex-M33, ARMv8-M, B-U585I-IOT02A board
STM32H573 Cortex-M33, ARMv8-M, STM32H573I-DK board

Astrobe for RP2040:

RP2040: Cortex-M0+, ARMv6-M, Pico 1 board

The most current versions of Astrobe for RPx are used, currently v10.0. Version v9.3 should work as well, but this backward compatibility has not been fully tested starting from lib/v2.1.

Other Tools

The Astrobe tool-set is complemented by additional tools.

Dependencies

Apart from the tools, the RTK modules depend on a few modules in the Astrobe library. Hence, you need to have a registered copy of one of the above Astrobe products.

Questions and Support

CFB Software has kindly granted permission to ask and answer questions related to this framework on the Astrobe forum. You can also e-mail me, or use the GitHub issue functionality.

Status and Current Work

See Project.

Updates, Changes, News

Latest updates and changes: 2026-03-07.

Check out section Updates for all updates, changes, and news.

See Site Structure and Navigation.

Licences

See Licences.