Publication

Abstract : This paper presents a comparative study in the working methodologies of the Bare Metal and the FreeRTOS programming for the STM32 board. Both these methods were programmed for a single application as a case study. The application includes three acquisition functionalities: temperature and humidity with DHT11, light intensity detection with LDR, and motion detection using PIR sensor. Sensor readings transmitted in real-time via the UART port. FreeRTOS implementation involves task based distribution of sensor data acquisition and synchronization using the mutex API. In contrast, the bare metal version is a structured super loop that involves register-level configuration for all the required peripherals, including polling, timing delays, and interrupt handling. This study concludes with a comparative analysis of the two approaches with respect to complexity, robustness, modularity, resource efficiency, and easy of programming. Results indicate that the bare metal programming achieves comparatively faster execution in simple use cases whereas the FreeRTOS offer better control and efficient execution.