Apps come to the embedded developer
Atmel Gallery is built directly into the Atmel Studio 6 development environment and is also available via the web to provide easy access to free and commercial extensions for Atmel Studio including development tools such as compilers, peripheral configuration, code editing and code analysis.
Developers can offer extensions to Atmel users through the store, either free or as paid apps. Atmel is moderating the apps for quality and says approvals should only take a few days, depending on the complexity of the app, says Joerg Bertholdt, director of marketing for MCU tools and software at Atmel. The gallery will also be exentded to support full boards as well as microcontrollers.
Third-party partners already include HP Info Tech, Keil (the compiler and tools division of ARM), Percepio, Red Lizard and Symnum Systems. For instance, FreeRTOS, a popular real-time embedded operating system (OS), is now integrated into the Atmel Software Framework (ASF) and available through Atmel Gallery to give designers easy access to use real-time OS capabilities in their MCU designs. Atmel will continue to include additional apps from partners into Atmel Gallery, including RTOS solutions such as Micrium’s µC/OS real-time kernels and µC/Probe data visualization tool and rapid prototyping tools such as Proteus VSM from Labcenter Electronics for hardware/software co-simulation.
Atmel Spaces sits alongside the Gallery to provide a cloud-based collaboration workspace for hosting software and hardware projects targeting Atmel MCUs. The G-Forge-based environment makes it easy for the MCU design community to collaborate, resulting in a rapidly growing community of developed tools and embedded software for Atmel MCUs. This provides all the tools to make collaborative development easy, including access control, version control system, bug and feature trackers, mailing lists and wikis. Projects hosted on Atmel Spaces are accessible directly from Studio 6.
“Embedded designers require a new type of development platform, one that helps meet the exploding software requirements in their MCU designs. Easy access to all their tool and software needs is key for enabling them to meet their challenging project timelines,” said Bertholdt. “Atmel Gallery and Atmel Spaces evolve Studio 6 in ways that do just that. Now, designers can take advantage of the same easy-to-use environment to satisfy all their tools and software needs with the opportunity to collaborate with other engineers.”
The extension development kit (XDK) for the app store is available now, and a development kit to support hardware through board support packages and code for board peripherals will be available next year.
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