Author Dr. Zakaria Kasmi

[[TOC]]

An application can be created for full-fledged or resource-limited devices.

Creating an application for full-fledged devices

We recommend to use the Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers for creating own application. The simplest way to write your own application, is to put your *.c and *.h files under the src directory. Another way is to create a directory containing the multiple C file(s) with your source code. The header files can be imported in the Eclipse IDE by opening Project->Properties and selecting ''C/C++ General->Paths and Symbols->Languages->GNU C'' from the Selection Wizard. Click the ''Add..'' button to browse to the header-directory and the select the ''Apply'' and ''OK'' buttons. The users can be oriented to the main.c and the examples in the main-directory of the RcdMathLib.

Creating an application for resource-limited devices

To create your own application for a resource-limited device you need to create a directory containing one or multiple C file(s) with your source code and a Makefile. An example Makefile is available in the src folder of the Eclipse project for resource-limited devices.

The main function

RIOT starts two threads the idle and main threads after the board is initialized. The idle thread has the lowest priority while the main thread has a priority that is in the middle between the lowest and the highest available priorities. The main thread is the first that runs and calls the main() function. This function needs to be defined in the source code of each application (typically located in the main.c file).

#include <stdio.h>

#include "matrix_test.h"
#include "vector_test.h"

int main(void)
{
    puts("RcdMathLib Application!");
    // Test the basic operations module;
    matrix_test();
    vector_test();
    
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

The above C code shows an application testing the basic operations sub-modules. This application run operations of the vector and matrix sub-modules.

The application's Makefile

The minimal Makefile

At minimum the Makefile of an application (see @ref getting-started) needs to define the following macros:

• APPLICATION: contains the name of your application
• RIOTBASE: specifies the path to your copy of the RIOT repository (note, the $(CURDIR) macro can be used to give a relative path)
• RCDMATHLIB: specifies the path to the copy of the RcdMathLib repository (note, the $(CURDIR) macro can be used to give a relative path)
• USEMODULE: specifies the module of the RcdMathLib that you may want to use

The BOARD macro is also required and recommended to be set to native by default, but is recommended to be overridable with the ?= operator. Additionally, it is required to include the Makefile.include from the RcdMathLib and from the RIOTBASE.

# Set the name of your application:
APPLICATION = foobar

# If no BOARD is found in the environment, use this default:
BOARD ?= native

# This has to be the absolute path to the RcdMathLib base directory:
RCDMATHLIB ?= $(CURDIR)/../RcdMathLib

# This has to be the absolute path to the RIOT base directory:
RIOTBASE ?= $(CURDIR)/../../RIOT


include $(RCDMATHLIB)/Makefile.include
include $(RIOTBASE)/Makefile.include

Including modules

The modules of the RcdMathLib as well as of the RcdMathLib can be included. In order to use additional modules, such as a particular driver or a system library, the modules' names must be appended to the USEMODULE variable. For example, to build an application using the SHT11 temperature sensor and UDP/IPv6 functionalities, the Makefile needs to contain the following lines:

USEMODULE += sht11
USEMODULE += gnrc_ipv6_default
USEMODULE += gnrc_udp

For example, to create an application using the matrix decompositions, the pseudo-inverse, and solving linear equations sub-modules, the Makefile must comprise the following lines:

USEMODULE += matrix_decompositions
USEMODULE += pseudo_inverse
USEMODULE += utilities