The Zephyr Virtual Board is a Zephyr-RTOS based project which enables running a zephyr application in a virtual environment, such as a game engine. The project currently provides a virtual bus with a set of virtual devices which the zephyr application interacts with, and the virtual environment implements.
This project provides implementations of the virtual bus and virtual hardware for the Godot Engine. The virtual hardware is provided as a set of assets for the Godot Engine in the form of sensors and motors which can be used with physics bodies, along with a devicetree like set of nodes used to bind the zephyr application's devicetree to specific sensors and motors within the game engine scene:
Devicetree snippet
DTBus snippet
The project is split into two parts:
- A Zephyr-RTOS project
- A Godot Engine project
Both of these projects run on Debian and Ubuntu. The project currently relies on the native_sim Zephyr-RTOS board, so if you have not already, this is the time to dual boot, switch to, or emulate Ubuntu or Debian.
Simply follow the official Getting Started guide. Once you are able to build and run hello world for the native_sim board by running the following commands:
west build -p -b native_sim zephyr/samples/hello_world west flash
You are ready to set up the zephyr virtual board project. The zephyr virtual board project is a custom zephyr workspace. Before when you ran the command:
west init
you initialized the default workspace, now we will init the custom zephyr virtual board project by running the following commands in a new folder:
west init -m https://github.com/bjarki-andreasen/zephyr-virtual-board west update
You should now have a workspace folder that looks near identical to the first one, but with the new "zvb" folder present. In here you will find the boards, drivers, subsystems, samples, etc which comprise the zephyr virtual board project.
The 3D models used in the Godot Engine project are created in Blender, which is used to import the models into the Godot Engine as well.
- Download and extract Blender version 4.5.3 from Blender Downloads.
- Download and extract Godot Engine version 4.5 from Godot Engine Downloads.
- Git clone the Godot Engine ZVB project
- Launch the Godot Engine application
- Press Import
- Navigate to the cloned Godot Engine ZVB project folder
- Select the project.godot and open the project
- When prompted, provide the path to the Blender application
The Godot Engine project should now be imported and ready to run.
- Open the Godot Engine ZVB project
- Navigate to and open the Levels/level_1.tscn scene in the FileSystem window.
- Then right click on the level_1 tab
- Select Play This Scene.
A window should now open with the game scene paused.
Build and flash the Zephyr-RTOS ZVB
west build -p -b native_sim/native/zvb zvb/samples/blinky west flash
Observe the game scene resume and LED0 blinking.
Try building the Zephyr-RTOS input_dump sample. This will print button presses as you press the buttons on the board in the game engine scene.
west build -p -b native_sim/native/zvb zephyr/samples/subsys/input/input_dump/ west flash
To get familiar with the Godot Engine, navigate to the board.tscn scene, find Led0 in the scene tree, press it, then press the Color in the Inspector under ZVBLed and change it to your preference.