The friendly Operating System for IoT!
RIOT is a real-time multi-threading operating system that supports a range of devices that are typically found in the Internet of Things (IoT): 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers.
RIOT is based on the following design principles: energy-efficiency, real-time capabilities, small memory footprint, modularity, and uniform API access, independent of the underlying hardware (this API offers partial POSIX compliance).
RIOT is developed by an international open source community which is independent of specific vendors (e.g. similarly to the Linux community). RIOT is licensed with LGPLv2.1, a copyleft license which fosters indirect business models around the free open-source software platform provided by RIOT, e.g. it is possible to link closed-source code with the LGPL code.
RIOT is based on a microkernel architecture, and provides features including, but not limited to:
- a preemptive, tickless scheduler with priorities
- flexible memory management
- high resolution, long-term timers
- support 100+ boards based on AVR, MSP430, ESP8266, ESP32, MIPS, RISC-V, ARM7 and ARM Cortex-M
- the native port allows to run RIOT as-is on Linux, BSD, and MacOS. Multiple instances of RIOT running on a single machine can also be interconnected via a simple virtual Ethernet bridge
- IPv6
- 6LoWPAN (RFC4944, RFC6282, and RFC6775)
- UDP
- RPL (storing mode, P2P mode)
- CoAP
- CCN-Lite
- Sigfox
- LoRaWAN
The most convenient way to get RIOT is to clone it via Git
$ git clone https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOTthis will ensure that you get all the newest features and bug fixes with the caveat of an ever changing work environment.
If you prefer things more stable, you can download the source code of one of our quarter annual releases via Github as ZIP file or tarball. You can also checkout a release in a cloned Git repository using
$ git pull --tags
$ git checkout <YYYY.MM>For more details on our release cycle, check our documentation.
- You want to start the RIOT? Just follow our quickstart guide or try this tutorial. For specific toolchain installation, follow instructions in the getting started page.
- The RIOT API itself can be built from the code using doxygen. The latest version of the documentation is uploaded daily to doc.riot-os.org.
Do you have a question, want to discuss a new feature, or just want to present your latest project using RIOT? Come over to our forum and post to your hearts content.
To contribute something to RIOT, please refer to our contributing document.
- RIOT commits: commits@riot-os.org
- Github notifications: notifications@riot-os.org
- Most of the code developed by the RIOT community is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
- Some external sources, especially files developed by SICS are published under a separate license.
All code files contain licensing information.
For more information, see the RIOT website: