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AppBlocks for Zephyr

Zephyr is powerful — but complex. AppBlocks lets you design your firmware logic visually and compile it straight to a Zephyr project, for hundreds of supported boards.

No deep RTOS knowledge required. Just draw your flow.

What is Zephyr?

Zephyr is an open-source, scalable real-time operating system backed by the Linux Foundation. It supports hundreds of boards from major silicon vendors, including Nordic, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Espressif, and many others.

Zephyr is fast, lean, and designed for resource-constrained embedded devices, but its configuration system, build toolchain, and device tree model have a steep learning curve that can slow down even experienced firmware developers.

ESP32 DevKitC development board

Zephyr is Powerful.
And Terrifying.

CMake, Kconfig, device tree overlays, west manifests, RTOS primitives — getting a Zephyr project off the ground takes time even before you write a single line of application code.

Most developers spend more time wrestling with the toolchain and boilerplate code than writing the actual application.

AppBlocks Tames the Complexity

With AppBlocks, you draw your application logic as a flowchart. AppBlocks handles all Zephyr complexities — threads, queues, GPIO bindings, timers — and generates clean, working Zephyr firmware.

You focus on what your device does. AppBlocks handles how Zephyr does it.

Why AppBlocks?

Targets All Zephyr-Compatible Boards

From Nordic nRF chips to STM32 to ESP32 — if Zephyr supports it, AppBlocks works with it.

Visual Firmware Design

Draw flowcharts in the browser instead of writing RTOS code. No complex installs, boilerplate code, threads, or other complexities.

Faster Time to Working Firmware

AppBlocks cuts days or even weeks off your project. Your iteration speed accelerates, too.

Produces
Clean Code

AppBlocks generates readable, maintainable Zephyr C code you can inspect and extend.

AppBlocks in the Age of AI

AI can write firmware code from a prompt — but raw AI output comes with serious reliability concerns. Will you bet your (customer's) farm on it?

✕  AI-Generated Code
Poor control over choices
AI picks libraries, patterns, structures, and names for you. You inherit its decisions — even bad ones.
Consistency is hard
Every prompt is independent. UI, naming, error handling — all are random unless you fight the model every step of the way.
Can't trust the output
There is usually too much code to inspect. How can you tell if it will work reliably or fail you in the field?
→
✓  AppBlocks Guardrails
Full control over what matters
UI, I/O behavior, timing, and logic are all yours to define — explicitly, visually, and predictably.
Consistency comes naturally
Blocks, naming, UI, and flow structure follow the same conventions everywhere. Your applications are uniform by design.
Build from known-good blocks
AppBlocks flows are assembled from verified building blocks that were designed to play nicely with each other.

Hundreds of Supported Boards

Nordic, STM32, ESP32, and other major brands — if Zephyr supports them, AppBlocks can target them.

Cross-Pollination: TiOS, Zephyr, and TPS

AppBlocks on Zephyr isn't some from-scratch experiment. It inherits decades of lessons from developing Tibbo OS (TiOS). It also gives back, supercharging our TPS platform in return.

TiOS → Zephyr

Decades of TiOS Experience, Applied

Battle-tested know-how
We have been developing and refining TiOS — Tibbo's homegrown operating system — for over two decades. That experience directly shaped how AppBlocks runs on Zephyr. For example...
RAM
Static memory model = Stability
TiOS taught us that having no dynamic memory allocation (no heap) is extremely beneficial for embedded systems: Memory leaks become impossible, and devices can run unattended indefinitely. Also...
Runs on Inexpensive ARMs
Static allocation brings along substantial memory savings, allowing us to run AppBlocks applications on inexpensive, midrange ARM chips.
Zephyr → TPS

Zephyr Makes TPS Better, Too

10–20× faster UI
The exchange goes both ways: moving to Zephyr makes web and screen UI run 10–20× faster than under TiOS. This means snappy dashboards and fluid on-device displays.
Multimedia unlocked
Zephyr also enables high-quality audio playback and microphone recording, an entirely new territory for TPS devices. Now you can build a new class of apps, such as intercoms, announcers, and more.
SD
SD card support
External storage has been a popular request from TPS customers for a while. This will be so handy for new audio applications!
Tibbo Project System TPB2L controller

Looking for a Complete Industrial Solution?

AppBlocks was built alongside the Tibbo Project System (TPS) — a modular platform for industrial automation and IoT. If you need a deployment-ready device, not just a dev board, TPS has you covered.