I can’t believe that it’s been two weeks since the Virtual 2022 RT-Thread Global Tech Conference. As you may or may not know, I was invited to host the proceedings (introducing the conference and the daily events, introducing the speakers, guiding the Q&A sessions, etc.) and I had a lot of fun doing so.

Just to make sure we are all tap-dancing to the same drumbeat, let’s remind ourselves that, born in 2006, RT-Thread is a tiny and elegant open-source, neutral, and community-based real-time operating system (RTOS) that is of particular interest for the IoT.

Agenda for the Virtual 2022 RT-Thread conference, which took place June 1-3 (Click image to see a larger version)

An exceptional group of speakers presented on a wide range of topics at this free-to-attend three-day extravaganza. As a result, I now know more about RT-Thread than I ever expected. For example, I discovered that RT-Thread currently powers more than 1.5 billion devices, including Wearables, Smart Home Appliances, Automotive Electronics, Medical Electronics, Consumer Electronics, Energy, and… the list goes on. I also learned that RT-Thread boasts 150-thousand-plus open-source community developers, which I think is really awesome.

Featuring very low resource occupancy, high reliability, and high scalability, RT-Thread can be used in sensing nodes, wireless connection chips, and a wide variety of resource-constrained and high-performance applications. With its rich middle-tier components and great hardware and software ecosystem, RT-Thread may also be considered to be an IoT platform, with almost every key basic component required for IoT devices, such as network protocols, file systems, low power management, etc.

RT-Thread also supports all mainstream compiling tools such as GCC, Keil, IAR, etc., and a variety of standard interfaces, such as POSIX, CMSIS, a C++ application environment, Micropython, and Javascript, making it easy for developers to port a wide range of applications. RT-Thread also offers great commercial support to all of the mainstream CPU architectures, such as ARM Cortex-M/R/A, RISC-V, MIPS, X86, Xtensa, etc.

Suffice it to say that I had a blast hosting this year’s RT-Thread Global Tech Conference, and I’m hoping they invite me to do the same again next year. In the meantime, if you’ve used RT-Thread yourself, I’d love to hear what you’ve done with it.