Best IoT Operating Systems

Raspberry Pi Imager is the quick and easy way to install Raspberry Pi OS and other operating systems to a microSD card, ready to use with your Raspberry Pi. Watch our 45-second video to learn how to install an operating system using Raspberry Pi Imager. Download and install Raspberry Pi Imager to a computer with an SD card reader. Put the SD card you'll use with your Raspberry Pi into the reader and run Raspberry Pi Imager. Browse a range of operating systems provided by Raspberry Pi and by other organisations, and download them to install manually.

Mongoose OS is open source and comes in two editions: Community and Enterprise. Reliable Over-The-Air updates Secure device provisioning Remote management. Trusted, field-tested, proven performance. Open source under Apache 2.0 license. Commercial licensing & support are available. integrated into thousands of commercial products deployed to hundreds of millions of devices in production environments. Mongoose OS is Google Cloud IoT Core Partner. Microsoft Azure IoT recommends Mongoose OS for OTA, automatic device management and deploying firmware updates at scale. 'Microsoft Developer: The IoT Show' demonstrates on how to update the firmware of devices running Mongoose OS over-the-air with The Azure IoT Hub Automatic Device Management. Google Cloud IoT Core uses MQTT for communication.

The World’s Leading Real-Time Operating System for the Intelligent Edge For nearly 35 years, VxWorks has been used to ensure the security, safety, and reliability you need to design and build mission-critical embedded systems that simply must work. VxWorks® is the industry’s most trusted and widely deployed real-time operating system (RTOS) for mission-critical embedded systems that must be secure and safe. It delivers a proven, real-time, and deterministic runtime combined with a modern approach to development. Regardless of industry or device type, companies building intelligent edge systems rely on the VxWorks pedigree of security, safety, high performance, and reliability. VxWorks is a deterministic, priority-based preemptive RTOS with low latency and minimal jitter. It is built on an upgradable, future-proof architecture to help you rapidly respond to changing market requirements and technology advancements.

Arm Mbed OS is a free, open-source IoT operating system that includes all the necessary features to develop IoT products. The OS includes everything you need to develop smart, connected products on Arm Cortex-M based hardware, including machine learning capabilities, security, connectivity stacks, an RTOS kernel and drivers for sensors and I/O devices. Arm Mbed OS is designed for the Internet of Things. It is integrated with connectivity, machine learning, networking, and security stacks and is supported with software libraries, development hardware, tutorials and examples. From hardware to the cloud, Mbed OS supports more than 70 silicon, module, cloud, and OEM partners, optimizing your developer choice. By using the Mbed OS API, your application code can remain clean, portable, and simple, while taking advantage of security, communications and machine learning. The integrated solution reduces development cost, time, and risk.

Launch your critical embedded systems faster with our commercial RTOS, development tools and services. BlackBerry QNX delivers a time-tested real-time operating system (RTOS), hypervisor, and other embedded software to help make you successful. We are the embedded OS of choice for ventilators, train controls, factory automation systems, medical robots and more. Whether your priority is safety certification, security or performance, our software, tools and services can help you build more reliable products. If you’re looking to increase security or safety, or you want to streamline your cross-platform development process, we can help. We can bring your plans to life with an RTOS and hypervisor purpose-built for embedded systems, including pre-certified product variants. Our modular microkernel architecture delivers better reliability and saves duplication of OS development effort across multiple products.

Torizon makes developers more productive and helps them create easy-to-maintain products. Integrated over-the-air updates and device monitoring allow you to ship earlier, patch bugs in the field, deliver new features and detect issues faster. Software containerization simplifies maintenance and provides an additional layer of robustness. Torizon is constantly validated on Toradex System on Modules (SoMs) to ensure that you can fully focus on your application, rather than the operating system. Torizon lets you develop your product in an agile and iterative fashion. The seamlessly integrated remote update features make it possible to deploy new software easily, while device monitoring gives you instant feedback about performance and potential issues.

RT-Thread is a community-led, open-source Real-Time Operating System. It boasts an extensive feature set, compatibility with over 600 ready-to-use software packages and a broad spectrum of components, and supports all mainstream chip architectures. It also includes a proprietary IDE, the RT-Thread Studio, to assist engineers in quickly embarking on embedded and IoT development. Designed with scalability in mind, RT-Thread is a flexible option for various IoT applications, thanks to its Nano version tailored for resource-limited applications. We invite you to join us on this thrilling journey and help shape the future of IoT and RTOS!

LynxOS has been deployed in millions of embedded devices and has operated reliably for 30+ years across multiple safety and security-critical embedded markets. It is a tried and true approach for hosting applications on a Unix-like OS model wherein all resources and application services are centrally managed by a common kernel and is best-suited for working with hardware architectures that predate virtualization. We want our customers to buy what they need, and only what they need. Real-time operating systems can provide a tremendous amount of value, but they are not required for every embedded system design. For a more complete listing of our RTOS-related resources, visit our Embedded Systems Learning Center, which is filled with helpful material for making software purchase decisions as you design or update your system and consider which real-time platform vendor is right for you.

Android Things lets you experiment with building devices on a trusted platform, without previous knowledge of embedded system design: Develop using the Android SDK and Android Studio, access hardware such as displays and cameras natively through the Android framework, use the Android Things Console to push over-the-air feature and security updates. Android Things enables you to build apps on top of popular hardware platforms like the Raspberry Pi 3. The Board Support Package (BSP) is managed by Google, so no kernel or firmware development is required. Software images are built and delivered to devices through the Android Things Console. This gives you a trusted platform to develop on with standard updates and fixes from Google.

Huawei LiteOS is an IoT-oriented software platform integrating an IoT operating system and middleware. It is lightweight, with a kernel size of under 10 KB, and consumes very little power — it can run on an AA battery for up to five years! It also allows for fast startup and connectivity and is very secure. These capabilities make Huawei LiteOS a simple yet powerful one-stop software platform for developers, lowering barriers to entry for development and shortening time to market. Huawei LiteOS provides a unified open-source API that can be used in IoT domains as diverse as smart homes, wearables, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and intelligent manufacturing. Huawei LiteOS enables an open IoT ecosystem, helping partners to quickly develop IoT products and accelerate IoT development.

When you develop with Windows, you join our world-wide partner ecosystem across hardware and software solutions, integrations, and services. Experience our continually evolving feature set, and developer friendly tools, for a smooth device-building experience.​​ Windows IoT provides 10-Year OS Lifecycle Support that is guaranteed with no hidden costs​ through our Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). Windows IoT operating systems support backwards compatibility in line with Microsoft’s application compatibility promise. With Windows IoT you can use Azure services as building blocks to construct customized IoT solutions. Azure provides the industry’s broadest portfolio of cloud services and capabilities according to your needs and with the requirements from your industry. Windows IoT is compatible with any existing device management solution.

Nucleus® RTOS enables system developers to address the complex requirements demanded by today’s advanced embedded designs. Nucleus brings together kernel-rich functionality and tooling features ideal for applications where a scalable footprint, connectivity, security, power management, and deterministic performance are essential. Nucleus RTOS is a proven, reliable, and fully optimized RTOS. Nucleus has been successfully deployed in highly demanding markets with rigorous safety and security requirements such as industrial systems, medical devices, airborne systems, automotive and more. Stable deterministic kernel with a small memory footprint. A lightweight process model for optimized memory partitioning. Dynamically load and unload processes for greater modularity of applications.

At the heart of any embedded OS is a kernel, which provides vital task scheduling and multi-tasking services to ensure that the timing requirements of your application code can be met, even as you regularly update and expand that code with new features. Micrium OS is more than a kernel, though, providing a number of additional modules to help you meet your project’s needs. Micrium OS is provided entirely free of charge for deployment on Silicon Labs EFM32 and EFR32 devices! You can begin adding Micrium’s professional-quality components to your projects today without payment of any licensing fees.

RIOT powers the Internet of Things like Linux powers the Internet. RIOT is a free, open source operating system developed by a grassroots community gathering companies, academia, and hobbyists, distributed all around the world. RIOT supports most low-power IoT devices, microcontroller architectures (32-bit, 16-bit, 8-bit), and external devices. RIOT aims to implement all relevant open standards supporting an Internet of Things that is connected, secure, durable & privacy-friendly. RIOT supports DTLS transport layer security, IEEE 802.15.4 encryption, Secure Firmware Updates (SUIT), multiple cryptographic packages, and crypto secure elements. RIOT is modular to adapt to application needs. We aim to support all common network technologies and Internet standards. RIOT is open to new developments and often an early adaptor in networking.

NuttX is a real-time operating system (RTOS) with an emphasis on standards compliance and small footprint. Scalable from 8-bit to 32-bit microcontroller environments, the primary governing standards in NuttX are Posix and ANSI standards. Additional standard APIs from Unix and other common RTOS’s (such as VxWorks) are adopted for functionality not available under these standards, or for functionality that is not appropriate for deeply-embedded environments (such as fork()). Apache NuttX is an effort undergoing Incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the Incubator. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects.