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| TinyOS | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | TinyOS Alliance |
| Written in | nesC |
| OS family | Embedded operating systems |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Open source |
| Initial release | 2000; 26 years ago (2000) |
| Latest release | 2.1.2 / August 20, 2012; 13 years ago (2012-08-20) |
| Repository | |
| Marketing target | Wireless sensor networks |
| Available in | English |
| License | BSD |
| Official website | tinyos |
TinyOS is an embedded, component-basedoperating system and platform for low-power wireless devices, such as those used inwireless sensor networks (WSNs),smartdust,ubiquitous computing,personal area networks,building automation, andsmart meters. It is written in theprogramming language nesC, as a set of cooperating tasks and processes. It began as a collaboration between theUniversity of California, Berkeley,Intel Research, andCrossbow Technology, was released asfree and open-source software under aBSD license, and has since grown into an international consortium, theTinyOS Alliance.
TinyOS has been used in space, being implemented inESTCube-1.
TinyOS applications are written in the programming languagenesC, a dialect of theC language optimized for the memory limits of sensor networks.[1] Its supplementary tools are mainly in the form ofJava andshell script front-ends. Associated libraries and tools, such as the nesC compiler andAtmel AVR binutils toolchains, are mostly written in C.
TinyOS programs are built ofsoftware components, some of which present hardware abstractions. Components are connected to each other usinginterfaces. TinyOS provides interfaces and components for common abstractions such as packet communication, routing, sensing, actuation and storage.
TinyOS is fullynon-blocking: it has onecall stack. Thus, allinput/output (I/O) operations that last longer than a few hundredmicroseconds are asynchronous and have acallback. To enable the nativecompiler to better optimize across call boundaries, TinyOS uses nesC's features to link these callbacks, called events, statically. While being non-blocking enables TinyOS to maintain high concurrency with one stack, it forces programmers to write complex logic by stitching together many small event handlers. To support larger computations, TinyOS provides tasks, which are similar to aDeferred Procedure Call andinterrupt handler bottom halves. A TinyOS component can post a task, which the OS will schedule to run later. Tasks are non-preemptive and run infirst in, first out order. This simpleconcurrency model is typically sufficient for I/O centric applications, but its difficulty with CPU-heavy applications has led to developing athread library for the OS, named TOSThreads. TOSThreads are unmaintained and have been deprecated.[2]
TinyOS code is statically linked with program code and is compiled into a small binary, using a customGNU toolchain. Associated utilities are provided to complete a development platform for working with TinyOS.
TinyOS began as a project at UC Berkeley as part of theDARPA NEST program. It has since grown to involve thousands of academic and commercial developers and users worldwide. (list in reverse chronological order)
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As of 2010, threeintegrated development environments (IDEs) are available for TinyOS, asplug-ins forEclipse:
