Open Source Embedded Libraries

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open-source platform for machine learning that provides a comprehensive ecosystem of tools, libraries, and community resources for both research and production. It features a flexible architecture allowing for seamless deployment across diverse hardware including CPUs, GPUs, and TPUs, while offering stable APIs in Python and C++ alongside a rich set of specialized extensions.

LVGL is a lightweight, open-source C graphics library designed to build professional user interfaces on any microcontroller or microprocessor. It features a hardware-independent architecture with low memory requirements, supporting advanced rendering features like anti-aliasing, animations, and complex layout engines.

MicroPython is a lean and efficient implementation of the Python 3 programming language specifically optimized to run on microcontrollers and constrained embedded environments. It provides a complete Python compiler and runtime, a cross-compiler for bytecode, and a robust set of hardware-abstraction modules, allowing developers to write high-level code for hardware with as little as 16kiB of RAM.

Nuklear is a portable, single-header immediate-mode graphical user interface toolkit written in ANSI C (C89). It is designed as a dependency-free, embeddable UI library that provides a modular approach, outputting primitive draw commands or vertex buffers rather than abstracting platform-specific rendering backends.

SQLite is a C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, and full-featured SQL database engine. It functions as a serverless, zero-configuration database that compiles SQL statements into bytecode for execution on a custom virtual machine, making it the most widely deployed database engine in the world.

PlatformIO Core is a cross-platform, multi-architecture build system and unified package manager designed for embedded systems development. It provides a command-line interface that orchestrates toolchains, library dependencies, and build processes across hundreds of boards and dozens of frameworks, eliminating vendor lock-in.

littlefs is a fail-safe filesystem specifically designed for microcontrollers with limited resources, featuring power-loss resilience and dynamic wear leveling. It employs a unique two-layer architecture combining metadata logs and copy-on-write structures to ensure data integrity and minimize flash wear while maintaining a strictly bounded memory footprint.

U8g2 is a comprehensive monochrome graphics library for embedded systems, designed to support a vast array of OLED and LCD controllers. It provides a flexible dual-library approach, offering U8g2 for full graphical rendering and font support, and U8x8 for memory-efficient, direct-to-display text output.

Libwebsockets (LWS) is a lightweight, high-performance C networking library providing client and server implementations for HTTP/1, HTTP/2, WebSockets, MQTT, and other protocols. It is designed for high scalability and flexibility, supporting both resource-constrained embedded RTOS environments like ESP32 and mass cloud serving through a non-blocking, event-driven architecture.

Nanopb is a lightweight, ANSI C implementation of Google Protocol Buffers optimized for microcontrollers and memory-constrained systems. It enables efficient serialization and deserialization by generating C code from .proto files, supporting static memory allocation to eliminate the need for dynamic memory management.

TFT_eSPI is a high-performance graphics and font library optimized for 32-bit microcontrollers, providing hardware-accelerated rendering via DMA and PIO. It features a robust Sprite system for flicker-free updates and advanced anti-aliasing for both vector graphics and typography across multiple display interfaces.

EasyLogger is an ultra-lightweight, high-performance C/C++ logging library specifically designed for resource-constrained IoT and embedded systems. It provides a flexible, thread-safe logging framework with support for dynamic filtering, multiple output modes including asynchronous and buffered, and extensibility through specialized plugins for Flash storage and file rotation.

OpenThread is an open-source, OS-agnostic implementation of the Thread networking protocol designed for low-power wireless mesh networking in home and commercial automation. It features a highly portable architecture with a narrow platform abstraction layer, supporting System-on-Chip (SoC), Network Co-Processor (NCP), and Radio Co-Processor (RCP) designs while maintaining a small memory footprint.

Jansson is a lightweight and portable C library for encoding, decoding, and manipulating JSON data with a focus on a simple and intuitive API. It features a stable design with no external dependencies, making it suitable for a wide range of environments from high-performance servers to resource-constrained embedded systems.

AWTK (Toolkit AnyWhere) is a high-performance, cross-platform GUI engine designed for a wide range of devices from low-end Cortex-M3 microcontrollers to high-end desktop and mobile systems. It features a decoupled MVVM architecture, hardware acceleration support, and a comprehensive suite of tools including a visual UI designer and multi-language bindings.

FlashDB is an ultra-lightweight, high-performance embedded database optimized for Flash memory, supporting both Key-Value (KVDB) and Time Series (TSDB) data models. It is designed to minimize resource consumption with near-zero RAM usage while ensuring data reliability through power-off protection and extending hardware lifespan via wear leveling.

EasyFlash is an open-source, lightweight embedded flash memory library designed for MCUs to handle common flash-based tasks such as Key-Value (KV) storage, In-Application Programming (IAP), and log management. It provides robust features like wear leveling and power-fail protection, making it ideal for resource-constrained devices requiring reliable data persistence without a full file system.

uTensor is a lightweight machine learning inference framework optimized for Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers, featuring a core runtime of approximately 2KB. It utilizes an offline tool to translate TensorFlow models into efficient C++11 code, providing deterministic memory usage and high-performance execution through CMSIS-DSP integration.

MCUboot is a secure, OS-independent bootloader for 32-bit microcontrollers that provides a standardized infrastructure for system flash layout and firmware image management. It enables secure software upgrades through cryptographic image verification, robust update swap mechanisms, and hardware-assisted security features across multiple RTOS platforms and architectures.

SPIFFS is a lightweight, heap-less file system designed for SPI NOR flash devices on resource-constrained embedded targets. It provides a POSIX-like API for flat file structures while implementing static wear leveling and garbage collection to maximize flash longevity and performance.

lwIP (lightweight IP) is a widely-used, open-source TCP/IP stack designed specifically for resource-constrained embedded systems. It minimizes RAM usage while providing a full-scale TCP implementation, making it suitable for devices with only tens of kilobytes of free memory.

Parson is a lightweight, C89-compliant JSON library for C that provides a simple API for parsing, manipulating, and serializing JSON data. It is uniquely characterized by its dot-notation addressing system for nested objects and its minimal footprint, consisting of only two source files.

LwRB is a lightweight, platform-independent C11 library providing a generic FIFO ring buffer implementation optimized for embedded systems. It is specifically designed to support zero-copy DMA transfers and provides thread and interrupt safety for single-reader/single-writer configurations without requiring mutexes on supported architectures.

µGUI is a lightweight, platform-independent graphic library designed specifically for resource-constrained embedded systems. It provides a comprehensive windowing system and UI widget set without requiring dynamic memory allocation, making it highly suitable for high-reliability microcontroller applications across various display technologies.

modm is a modular C++23 library generator and hardware abstraction layer (HAL) designed for resource-constrained AVR and ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. It utilizes the lbuild code generator to produce target-specific startup code, drivers, and communication protocols with a focus on zero memory allocation and high portability across thousands of devices.

Apache NimBLE is a feature-complete, open-source Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.4 stack comprising both Host and Controller layers. Designed for resource-constrained embedded systems, it serves as a portable alternative to proprietary stacks, supporting advanced features like Bluetooth Mesh, multi-role concurrency, and high-density connection management.

OpenBLT is a highly customizable, open-source bootloader designed for 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit microcontrollers to facilitate firmware updates without specialized debugger hardware. It utilizes the standardized ASAM MCD-1 XCP protocol for communication and supports a wide range of interfaces including CAN, RS232, USB, and TCP/IP, complemented by cross-platform host utilities for Windows and Linux.

This library provides a comprehensive Modbus implementation for STM32 microcontrollers, supporting TCP, RTU (USART), and USB-CDC interfaces. Built upon the STM32 Cube HAL and FreeRTOS, it enables multithread-safe concurrent execution of multiple Modbus Master and Slave instances across various hardware transport layers.

MaixPy (v4) is a high-level Python SDK designed for rapid deployment of AI vision and audio applications on edge computing hardware. It provides a simplified Python interface to the MaixCDK C++ framework, enabling hardware-accelerated NPU inference, multimedia processing, and peripheral control on RISC-V and ARM-based edge devices.

Eclipse ThreadX GUIX is a high-performance, small-footprint graphical user interface framework specifically engineered for deeply embedded systems. It provides a comprehensive API for UI development and integrates with GUIX Studio, a desktop design tool that automates C code generation for graphical elements, ensuring rapid development and deployment on resource-constrained hardware.

Ucglib is a high-performance color graphics library designed for microcontrollers, providing comprehensive support for various TFT and OLED display controllers with an 18-bit color depth engine. It features advanced graphics primitives, including filled polygon drawing and an extensive library of over 300 fonts, optimized for resource-constrained environments like Arduino.

The EEPROM File System (EEFS) is a lightweight, non-block oriented file system designed specifically for memory devices such as EEPROM, RAM, and ROM. It provides a simple, deterministic API for embedded systems, supporting standalone operation, integration with RTOSs like vxWorks and RTEMS, and host-side image generation for target deployment.

Belay is a Python library and command-line tool that bridges the gap between host-side Python logic and MicroPython or CircuitPython hardware. It allows developers to treat a connected microcontroller as an extension of their host environment by merging on-device firmware logic and host-side program logic into a single, synchronized codebase.

esp-nimble-cpp is a high-performance, thread-safe C++ wrapper for the Apache NimBLE Bluetooth Low Energy stack, specifically optimized for the ESP32 series. It provides a resource-efficient alternative to the default Bluedroid-based library, significantly reducing RAM and Flash consumption while maintaining API compatibility with popular ESP32 BLE libraries.

JesFs is a lightweight, robust file system specifically engineered for serial NOR-Flash memories in ultra-low-power embedded systems. It provides a minimal footprint, optimized wear leveling, and high-speed data access, making it suitable for IoT applications requiring reliable data persistence and secure firmware updates.

BIPES is a web-based, block-based visual programming platform designed for the rapid development and deployment of embedded systems and IoT applications. It provides a no-install environment that translates visual blocks into executable code for a wide range of microcontrollers and single-board computers, supporting both online and offline workflows.

The Zephyr Scientific Library (zscilib) is a portable C-based library designed for scientific computing, data analysis, and data manipulation on resource-constrained embedded hardware. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for linear algebra, physics simulations, and sensor fusion, enabling complex processing to occur directly on the endnode rather than requiring external server-side analysis.

LevelX is a specialized flash wear leveling library for embedded systems, providing management for both NAND and NOR flash memory. It presents a logical sector interface to applications while transparently managing physical flash constraints, ensuring even distribution of erase cycles and robust fault tolerance during power interruptions.

ESP32-targz is a comprehensive Arduino-compatible library for ESP32, ESP8266, and RP2040 microcontrollers designed to manage .tar, .gz, and .tar.gz archives. It facilitates bi-directional data flow between various filesystems and compressed streams, enabling advanced features like direct firmware updates from compressed archives and low-memory archive extraction.

Reliance Edge is a small, portable, and power-fail safe file system designed specifically for resource-constrained embedded systems such as microcontrollers. It utilizes a unique transactional model to ensure data integrity during sudden power loss and provides both a POSIX-compliant API and a minimalist File System Essentials (FSE) API.

EmbeddedMqttBroker is a high-performance, asynchronous MQTT 3.1.1 broker implementation for ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers. It leverages an event-driven, non-blocking architecture and FreeRTOS tasks to manage concurrent TCP and WebSocket connections with minimal CPU overhead and high scalability.

RTEdbg is a lightweight, minimally intrusive binary data logging and tracing toolkit designed for real-time embedded systems. It enables high-speed instrumentation by logging raw binary data to a RAM buffer for offline or live decoding on a host machine, supporting complex data structures and timing analysis without halting execution.

Eclipse ThreadX FileX is a high-performance, FAT-compatible file system designed specifically for deeply embedded applications requiring a small memory footprint and high execution speed. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT formats and is fully integrated with the ThreadX RTOS to provide deterministic file management across various physical media including RAM, SD cards, and flash memory.

The Newtron Flash File System (NFFS) is a lightweight, reliable flash file system designed specifically for resource-constrained embedded devices. It optimizes for minimal RAM footprint while ensuring data integrity across power cycles, providing native support for both the Apache Mynewt and Zephyr RTOS environments.