As longtime partners of Arduino, we at Elektor are thrilled to share exciting news with our community: Arduino has announced the beta release of its first cores built on ZephyrOS. This marks a pivotal step in Arduino’s transition away from Mbed OS, a well-known real-time operating system (RTOS) that has long supported embedded development. 

Mbed OS, developed by ARM, has provided a robust abstraction layer for microcontroller-based applications, enabling faster development with its extensive libraries and real-time features. However, following ARM’s decision to deprecate Mbed OS – slated to reach its end of life in July 2026 – Arduino began exploring alternatives. Last July, Arduino revealed its plan to adopt ZephyrOS, a modern RTOS offering advanced capabilities and a vibrant open-source ecosystem.

In the Arduino ecosystem, each board is paired with a core, which implements the Arduino programming language for its specific microcontroller. While many boards like those in the UNO, MKR, and Nano families are unaffected by this shift, boards including the GIGA, Nano 33 BLE, Nano RP2040 Connect, Portenta, Nicla, and Opta have relied on Mbed OS. Transitioning these cores to ZephyrOS ensures continued support and introduces powerful new features.

ZephyrOS is a next-generation RTOS designed for flexibility, scalability, and high performance. Its modular design and real-time scheduling capabilities make it ideal for modern embedded systems. Developers using the new Arduino cores built on ZephyrOS will benefit from features like dynamic sketch loading, threading, and inter-process communication. Notably, the integration between Arduino and ZephyrOS ensures these enhancements remain user-friendly, preserving the intuitive development experience Arduino is known for.

This collaboration also offers practical benefits: faster compilation times, smaller binaries, and access to Zephyr’s rich library ecosystem. Arduino’s GitHub repository provides all the resources developers need to get started, including installation instructions and technical documentation.

We encourage our community to explore this beta release and contribute feedback through Arduino’s GitHub Issues page. Your input can greatly help shape the future of Arduino development. With this transition to ZephyrOS, we’re excited to see Arduino embracing a modern and future-proof approach. It's time to dust off your Arduino boards, dive into this exciting new chapter, and start experimenting! Also make sure you have a look at our article Getting Started With the Zephyr RTOS. Don’t forget to share your work with the community on the Elektor Labs platform – we’d love to see what you create.

Source of thumbnail image: Arduino.