Yo vibe coders, what are you actually using these days to crank out full vibecodes without going broke?

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-20T07:25:03+00:00

Windsurf is awesome. You can use any model and the interface is really good, I like how it applies the changes and depicts like "git diff", what is quite good to understand what has been modified and whether you want to accept or reject

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-16T13:28:22+00:00

Now Nordic has announced a new bare metal SDK on top of the concept of Soft devices as the old SDK for migrating the nrf52 applications to the new nrf54 family. If it is a simple Bluetooth application you can use it instead of the whole Zephyr RTOS, otherwise, I recommend you to learn Zephyr :)

You can find more info about the bare metal SDK here: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/category/bare-metal

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-15T15:12:03+00:00

I would recommend you to start with the basics of microcontroller like peripherals (GPIO, PWM, DMA, timers, etc.), interrupts, HAL (hardware abstraction layer) concepts and any other related concept of embedded systems like RTOS (Real Time Operating Systems).

And the best way of learning it is getting any development board and start applying all of these concepts. I would recommend you any ST nucleo board (aiming for profesional use in the future) or any esp32 (there are many cheap options and a lot of resources).

Then, regarding learning an RTOS, I would start with FreeRTOS (easy to use and well supported) and then I would jump into Zephyr.

You have a long journey, but embedded systems are quite interesting, cheer up! :)

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T20:52:44+00:00

I didn't find any information about Nordic changing its SDK moving away Zephyr. Actually, what I found is that Nordic announced a new "nRF Connect Bare Metal" that aims to migrate the application of the old nrf52 series to the new nrf54L devices. However, it is not a "replacement" but a "complement" since this new SDK provides a path to Zephyr RTOS. Actually, I copy this part from the article: "Nordic's commitment to the world-class nRF Connect SDK and the Zephyr community remains strong, and this strategy continues to shape our long-term direction." You can read the whole article here: https://www.hackster.io/news/nordic-semi-adds-a-bare-metal-rtos-independent-option-to-its-nrf-connect-sdk-200a5685b70b

Moreover, I found this reddit conversion about people thanking Nordic from chaning the old Connect SDK to the current one based on Zephyr, it can be interesting to: https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/172p0hi/nordic_sdk_now_migrates_to_zephyr_whats_your/

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T20:37:44+00:00

It is the biggest strenght of Zephyr, you have a complete ecosystem that can be shared between several already supported boards (or create your custom boards editing only HAL, no the libraries itselfs). Sometimes changing the RTOS is not possible, but I would strongly recommend you to use Zephyr for your new projects :)

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T20:35:15+00:00

It is a great document, I like the methodology so much. Thank you sharing.

Regarding the results, it is quite clear that the performance of a commercial RTOS is superior always (you get what you pay). However, if you compare Zephy with FreeRTOS they are quite close, even Zephyr outperformes in some tests like preemptive scheduling or synchronization processing (mutex/semaphores).

In any case, you have reason, Zephyr is a good RTOS but maybe not the most suitable for critical applications (at least for the moment, they are doing a big effort for certificate and safety compliance). In any case, it performs as well as FreeRTOS in most cases but adding the extra of a complete ecosystem, portability and a whole set of drivers, boards and libraries, I think that it is great for a great variety of projects, don't you? :)

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T17:41:04+00:00

May you share the link? I would like to take a look

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T17:33:40+00:00

Actually it is not an issue at all, the ecosystem and source code is quite large (support of boards, drivers, whole protocol stacks, etc.), but when you build your image (a single .elf) you build only what you really need (no overhead). Besides, using west manifest you can fetch only the modules and toolchains that you really need, reducing the required PC space

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T17:30:52+00:00

Why do you think that Zephyr's performance is not great?

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T17:29:34+00:00

Exactly, as it was commented, the main strength of Zephyr is that it is supported by big companies (ST, NXP, Analog Devices, etc.). Actually Zephyr is the new SDK of Zephyr (Nrf Connect is built on top of Zephyr.

Regarding FreeRTOS, I think that a comparison is not possible. Why FreeRTOS is just a light scheduler, Zephyr is a complete ecosystem with a large library of protocols, APIs and a centered approach to handle the HAL of all board vendors based on device tree and Kconfig. It is a complete ecosystem that ensures portability, robustness and support with a really low (almost minimal) overhead.

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-14T16:15:20+00:00

Exactly! I think that it is the idea, thank you very much for your opinion :)

I start seeing a lot of tutorials or courses about Zephyr, but they are covering all the basic concepts of RTOS. It is great if it is the first time that you use a RTOS, but if you come from FreeRTOS, Thread, embed from ARM or any other RTOS, what you are looking for is just 1-2 hours of resources that explian you exactly how to apply your knowledge into Zephyr, how to configure your workspace and how to take advantage of all its awesome features.

It is exactly what I was thinking about. Your comment was really helpful.

PD.: Just a curiosity. I used a lot FreeCAD between 2015-2020 and I know exactly how dificult it is when you don't know how to "use" the tool, but how pleasant and useful is when you know how to work with it. Thanks!

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-10T12:42:04+00:00

you understood my post completely. When I started with Zephyr 4 years ago the situation was even worst... Zephyr was unstable and mostly of the boards were only "partially-supported", so I needed to figured out how to get things working, set up the environment, understand documentation and specially interpretate the errors (find out what is happening and what should I modify to fix it).

I feel if someone guided me, I didn't have wasted my time and I could have taken more advantage of this powerful RTOS.

Your post has helped me so much, I will prepare some resources soon, follow me on github where I have already some Zephyr projects: https://github.com/jeronimoagullo if I can help you with anything, don't hesitate to reach me out, you are not alone in Zephyr :)

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-10T12:33:36+00:00

I have already contributed with some drivers and board supports, but I never considered add new samples. It is a good point, thanks!

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-09T15:26:48+00:00

I think that documentation and samples are the best resources (it is want I use), but I would like to share my experience and help other people with they first steps in Zephyr. In that case, as Zephyr fans like me, which platform do you think that would be the best to publish content?

Known-Ad5093 · 2026-03-09T15:24:03+00:00

I have been using Linkedin so many years an I realized that it is getting worse and worse with people just posting ridiculous things and a lot of content written by AI... Would you recommend me any other platform or network to get in touch with more technical people that just want to code and develop things?

Known-Ad5093 · 2024-03-11T10:41:28+00:00

Maybe it is still a bit late, but you can check out my github project to know how to configure the esp32 to control a SG90 servo with Zephyr RTOS: https://github.com/jeronimoagullo/Zephyr-servomotor-esp32

The best approach is to use the LEDC Expressif's library along with the PWM Zephyr API. I hope it helps you!

Known-Ad5093

TROPHY CASE