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Yocto at Balena

Building ~70 Unique OS’es for IoT Devices

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David Tischler

Developer Advocate

t: @balena_io

e: david@balena.io

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Who is Balena?

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Etcher, anyone?

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You could also use `dd`

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balena

“Platform built to develop, deploy, and manage fleets of connected devices at scale.”

balenaCloud

Web-based control of IoT devices, broken down by Applications, Devices, Workloads, and more 
Terminal access to device, logs, container build info, and more.

balenaOS

Based on Yocto Linux

balenaEngine

Container runtime

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What do we mean by IoT “Fleet Management”?

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Architecture

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balenaOS

Built on Yocto Linux, Optimized for Embedded Devices and IoT Usage

Minimal by design (increased security)
Less RAM / resource requirements
Redundant RootFS partitions
More tolerant of power loss
Minimized SD Card writes

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balenaEngine

Container engine built for Embedded and IoT use-cases, based on the Moby Project from Docker

Minimal by design
Less RAM / resource requirements
Delta pulls to save bandwidth
Fault tolerance on container pulls

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balenaOS

Built on Yocto Linux, Optimized for Embedded Devices and IoT Usage

The Yocto project enables us to build an OS, add our custom bits, and create a business model around it.
balenaOS is open source, just like Yocto.

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69 Devices in Total

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How is this accomplished?

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Repeat 68 more times

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Adding a new board

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https://github.com/balena-os

Does your board have a Yocto build already?
Check for existing “similar” boards

SoC Manufacturer 
Product Line

If so, clone the appropriate repo and begin porting in your board
If not, then you will need to go the longer way (but not terrible), which is starting from scratch as documented here:

https://www.balena.io/os/docs/custom-build/

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Yocto Project Call-to-Action

https://lists.yoctoproject.org/g/yocto/topic/open_source_maintainers_an/82722441

There are a few things companies can do to help:

a) Publicly acknowledge you use the project.
b) Embrace employee's Open Source contributions, code and otherwise
c) Consider Yocto Project membership
d) Support employees in spending some time on open source projects
e) Transition roles�

https://www.yoctoproject.org/join/

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Additional Resources

balena Blog: https://www.balena.io/blog/

balena Forums: https://forums.balena.io/

balena-os GitHub: https://github.com/balena-os

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Questions / Q&A

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