Heya, Folks!
We've got news: AppBlocks is coming to Zephyr.
A Quick Zephyr Primer
If you already live in the Zephyr world, skip ahead. For everyone else: Zephyr is an open-source RTOS (real-time operating system) backed by the Linux Foundation and supported by pretty much every major silicon vendor — NXP, Nordic, Espressif, STMicroelectronics, and more. It runs on over a thousand boards, from ESP32 modules to Nordic nRF dev kits to STM32 MCUs. It's becoming the natural choice for professional embedded firmware development, and its hardware support list keeps growing.
In short: Zephyr is taking over the microcontroller space.
AppBlocks and Zephyr
Until now, AppBlocks only targeted TPS (Tibbo Project System) devices running TiOS (Tibbo OS). TPS and TiOS will still be fully supported — nothing is changing there. But we've always believed that our visual, flow-based IoT development platform shouldn't be restricted to a single hardware family. Adding Zephyr support is how we open that door.
Once this is ready, you'll be able to build AppBlocks applications for your ESP32, your Nordic nRF chips, and your STM32s using the same no-code visual environment, the same block-based logic, the same visual flows you either already know or are about to discover. The platform stays the same. Your hardware options expand dramatically.
At the same time, Zephyr will come to TPS and other Tibbo hardware. At the moment, we are working hard to achieve feature parity between Zephyr-based and TiOS-based AppBlocks apps. Once we get there, most of your AppBlocks projects will compile for TPS devices running Zephyr just as easily as they compile for TPS devices running TiOS.
We'll keep posting updates as we hit milestones. Stay tuned.
— The AppBlocks Team