Start date: 21 September 2026
Duration: 5 days
Location: Dublin in-person
Certificate: N/A
Cost: Members €850; Non-members € 1275
Course code: N/A
Programme overview
This 5-day course covers the full Zephyr RTOS development lifecycle: building and configuring applications with West, Kconfig and Device Tree; mastering kernel services such as threads, scheduling, synchronisation, inter-thread communication and interrupt handling; analysing memory usage and optimising footprint; and progressing to advanced topics including user mode, out-of-tree modules, the Zephyr driver model, power management, custom board creation, and testing with Ztest and Twister. Between 40% and 50% of the course is dedicated to hands-on labs in which participants write, build, debug and trace real Zephyr code. The remainder consists of lectures, live demonstrations and Q&A, so that every concept introduced is immediately applied in practice. By the end of the week, participants are able to develop, configure and debug production-quality Zephyr applications and drivers autonomously.
Learning outcomes
• Develop, configure, build, and debug Zephyr applications
• Write and customise Device Tree overlays and Kconfig fragments
• Implement kernel services: threads, scheduling, synchronisation, and IPC mechanisms
• Use west and write west manifest
• Analyse memory usage, detect stack overflows, and optimise RAM/ROM footprint
• Develop production-quality Zephyr device drivers following the driver model
• Integrate power management at system and device driver level
• Create Zephyr out-of-tree modules and with custom devicetree files
• Create and integrate custom boards
• Write and run Zephyr test suites with Ztest and Twister
Who is the course for?
The course is designed for experienced embedded engineers responsible for driver development, BSP customisation, board bring-up, and application development, as well as engineers coming from bare-metal, traditional RTOS environments (such as FreeRTOS), or Embedded Linux backgrounds who want to learn Zephyr RTOS. Familiarity with C programming and general embedded systems concepts is assumed.
Course Outline
Day 1 – Introduction, Build System and Configuration: Zephyr ecosystem and architecture; application structure and build flow; Kconfig and Device Tree configuration; core subsystems and APIs (GPIO, I2C, shell).
Day 2 – West, Kernel, Threads, Tracing and Memory: West workspaces and manifests; thread lifecycle and scheduling; tracing and logging (ZView, Tracealyzer); memory architecture, dynamic allocation, stack analysis.
Day 3 – User Mode, Synchronisation, IPC and Interrupts: User/kernel mode separation; mutexes and spinlocks; message queues, pipes and the Zbus framework; interrupt handling and workqueues.
Day 4 – Modules, Kconfig and Device Driver Architecture: Out-of-tree modules and CMake integration; writing custom Kconfig symbols; the Zephyr driver model, initialisation levels and driver registration.
Day 5 – Devicetree, Power Management, Boards and Testing: Device Tree in depth (bindings, property access, pin control); system and device power management; developing custom boards; testing with Ztest and Twister.
Trainer Profile
Roy Jamil holds a PhD in real-time embedded systems and has been a trainer at AC6 since 2017, delivering courses on Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ThreadX and Embedded Linux. He is the author of this course and of the Zephyr RTOS Cookbook, published by Packt. Roy is a Zephyr Technical Steering Committee (TSC) representative and a regular speaker at the Embedded Open Source Summit and other embedded systems conferences. Alongside training, he provides consulting and support to companies adopting Zephyr and porting drivers and boards.
Email training@midasireland.ie for bookings and queries
