uC/OS-III: The Real-Time Kernel

Exactly what I needed. Good condition. Great price. Supports a good cause

The reason i am not putting five stars has only to do with the support by the company. Regarding the book itself, all the chapters are well orgrnized, they are understandable and the examples at the end, although simplistic, they give a good idea of how the board should be programmed

If you use the uC/OS-III ("micro see oh ess three") real time operating system, this book is compulsory. It's the only reference that covers all features of the 2009 release of this popular RTOS. Unlike some other "only references" on their subjects, I find this one well-written, well-organized, and easy to use. Roughly the first half of the book explains the OS operation in extraordinary detail. This isn't an OS for naïve users. It comes in source form, for embedded system developers who need to port it to novel processors and who need to understand every instruction when the debugging turns ugly. The text supports those developers well, explaining the intent and usage of all the major OS subsystems. Appendices in the second half of this massive book present the programmers' reference, including configuration controls. Embedded systems are as different from each other as your car's airbags are from your cell phone, so these options let you include all and only the features needed for the application at hand - an important way to reduce ROM requirements in cost-critical applications. The last 150 pages walk the user through examples based on Micrium's eval board. As a reference, I fault this book only for its maddeningly brief index - but weaknesses there are largely made up for in the detailed (15 page) table of contents.I'm not creating embedded systems right now, though. I'm teaching an OS course, one where the students will appreciate a concentration on real-time and embedded systems. This makes a great secondary reference for that class, as a case study in what an industrial-strength RTOS looks like. Best of all, it deals with the OS source, sometimes line by line. That gives students a much more realistic idea of what a task control block is than some handwaving about "all the information the OS needs."If you need this, as an industrial practitioner, you need it. But, even for people just learning about operating systems, this makes a great backup to broader, more theoretical texts like Silberschatz or Tanenbaum. It gives the solid feel of reality to concepts that might seem vague until you see them in practice.- wiredweird

As a long time reader of the initial book UC/OS-II I eagerly awaited the release of this one. Particularly since it was supposed to have "everything you need to get up and running developing code in minutes". WRONG!! There is no code, development tools etc with the book that I received. When I tried to find a down load link in the book - it doesn't exist. I finally got into micriums site after registering and down loaded what I thought was the companion software, wrong again. Just application examples, no dev tools. I havent even got passed chapter one yet and I already feel like asking for a refund.The rest of the book may be fantastic but it fails on the books basic premis of providing a quick fix for exploring UC/OS-III. Other systems I have purchased both hardware and software come complete ready to go. If thats what you want and are a newbie to UC/OS-III then dont buy this book!!

I bought the 2nd edition book 10 years ago which described uC/OS-II. Using this book I taught myself all about real-time kernels, ported the RTOS to a 32-bit microcontroller and even used it as a basis for an RTOS training course. This book covered RTOS fundamentals and uC/OS-II in great detail. This latest book by Jean J. Labrosse - uC/OS-III The Real-Time Kernel takes everything up a gear. Not only do we still get the excellent introduction to real-time operating systems we now also have examples of when certain features of the RTOS should be used, for example, whether to use a semaphore or a mutex and how to assign task priorities efficiently. Of course along with each RTOS feature, comes a set of functions to make use of it. Each configuration parameter and function, or API, is covered in detail and with an example of its use. For me this is the single most important and the best thing about this book and using the RTOS which many other RTOS vendors miss. Having an example of using API calls makes using this RTOS easier and less painful and I doubt there is a better user manual out there.The RTOS itself has had a major overhaul and now offers a lot more features and functions some of which I don't think are available elsewhere. For example the sending of messages and signals can be time stamped so the time taken for them to arrive can be determined and there are built-in performance management features. Also, uC/OS-III supports an unlimited number of task priorities including being able to set multiple tasks with the same priority and utilise round-robin scheduling.The book is supplied with an evaluation board, demo applications and compiler and debugger downloadable from the Internet. This means that the RTOS can used straight away. With the previous edition 10 years ago I had to first port the RTOS to my board so now to be able to use it straight out of the box without the need for any tweaking or porting is great. The demos supplied with the board can make use of product called uC/Probe from Labrosse's company Micrium which uniquely lets you view and modify variables in the system while it is running. Definitely worth checking out.All in all this book, tools and board are an excellent introduction to real-time kernels for the hobbyist, student or experienced engineer looking to learn about and use a powerful commercial RTOS solution.

Very helpful book, with good examples