Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 149 Comments on Giveaway Week – Balena Fin Developer Kit

Giveaway Week – Balena Fin Developer Kit

balenaFin, RPi Compute Module, Power Supply, Enclosure

We’ve been organizing “giveaway weeks” every year since 2014 on CNX Software to send some of the review samples to our readers. Let’s do it again in 2019 starting with Balena Fin developer kit based on Raspberry Pi 3+ Computer Module (CM3+) with 8GB flash and a carrier board in order to get started with BalenaOS operating system and the company’s balenaCloud service. Instead of a traditional review, we wrote a getting started guide for balenaFin Developer Kit, balenaOS and balenaCloud, where we explain how to flash the OS to the board, configure it, run a container, and manage the device, including container updates, from Balenacloud. The winner will receive the full kit below with carrier board, Raspberry Pi CM3+ module, CR1225 battery, enclosure, power supply, and MicroUSB cable. It will come already assembled as shown in the first photo. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Nubix Edge-native Tiny Containers for IoT Apps Released For Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone SBCs

Nubix Edge-native Tiny Containers for IoT Apps Released For Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone SBCs

Nubix has just launched the developer edition of its edge-native tiny containers for IoT application development and analytics that target microcontrollers and single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi 3/4 and BeagleBone Black. Typical cloud solutions such as Docker are often too large with tiny IoT devices, and to solve these issues, Nubix tiny containers are sized in kilobytes, instead of megabytes, or about 100 times smaller than a Docker container, in order to be small enough to run at the edge. Nubix.io provides access to a library of sensors, analytics and tiny services that leverage open source languages and pre-packaged functions to easily create IoT applications in a few minutes. Analytics is commonly done in the cloud, which may cause issues in environments with limited or intermittent connectivity, so to solve this issue, Nubix provides analytics functionality directly on the IoT device, eliminating the latency, bandwidth, connectivity and cost constraints of moving data from a large number of connected sensors/nodes. […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on FOSSASIA 2019 Schedule – March 14-17

FOSSASIA 2019 Schedule – March 14-17

FOSSASIA 2019 Schedule

As its name implies, FOSSASIA is a Free and Open Source Software  event taking place every year in Asia, more specifically in Singapore. I first discovered it last year, and published a virtual FOSSASIA 2018 schedule last year to give an idea about the subjects discussed at the event. It turns out FOSSASIA 2019 is coming really soon, as in tomorrow, so I’m a bit late, but I’ll still had a look at the schedule and made my own for the 4-day event.  Thursday – March 14, 2019 10:05 – 10:25 – For Your Eyes Only: Betrusted & the Case for Trusted I/O by Bunnie Huang, CTO Chibitronics Security vulnerabilities are almost a fact of life. This is why system vendors are increasingly relying on physically separate chips to handle sensitive data. Unfortunately, private keys are not the same as your private matters. Exploits on your local device still have the potential to grant bad actors access to your screen […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on K3s Lightweight Kubernetes Distribution Targets Low Resources x86 and Arm Platforms

K3s Lightweight Kubernetes Distribution Targets Low Resources x86 and Arm Platforms

k3s

Kubernetes (K8s) is described as a “portable, extensible open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available. Google open-sourced the Kubernetes project in 2014”. However, as Rancher Labs’ CEO Sheng Liang explains “existing Kubernetes distributions are often memory intensive and overly complex for edge computing environments”, so the company developed and launched K3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution designed for developers and operators looking for a way to run Kubernetes in resource-constrained x86, Armv7-A and 64-bit Armv8-A hardware platforms often found in edge computing environments, as opposed to the cloud. Rancher Labs managed to reduce the footprint of Kubernetes, and better adapt it to entry-level hardware by taking four main steps: Removing old and non-essential code – Alpha functionalities, all non-default admission controllers, in-tree cloud providers, and storage drivers are disabled by default, opting instead to allow users to add […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on BalenaFin is an Industrial Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi CM3L Module Designed for Fleets of Connected Devices

BalenaFin is an Industrial Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi CM3L Module Designed for Fleets of Connected Devices

Resin.io-Project-Fin

[Update January 2019: Resin.io Project Fin has been renamed to BalenaFin, I have not changed the rest of the article] Resin.io is a both a company and a software platform that includes device, server, and client software to get code securely deployed to a fleet of devices.  Devices are setup to run ResinOS, and to deploy you app, you just need to push the code to resin.io build servers, where it will be packaged into containers and delivered to your fleet of boards. So far, resin.io relied on existing hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi 3, BeagleBone Black, or Intel NUCs, but they’ve now decided to launch their first hardware with Project Fin that takes a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 Lite, is hardened for field deployment use cases, and adds some of most commonly requested hardware features such as variable supply voltage support,  RTC, and cellular connectivity (via mPCIe card). Project Fin board specifications: Main Processor SoM – Raspberry Pi […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on UBPorts Ubuntu Touch Firmware to Add Android App Support using Anbox

UBPorts Ubuntu Touch Firmware to Add Android App Support using Anbox

Last spring, Canonical stopped working on mobile and convergence, and dropped any work on Unity, which explains why Ubuntu 17.10 is now running Gnome desktop environment by default. The company had to take this decision because there was little interest from manufacturers for such solution, and instead they refocused on the more profitable IoT and cloud markets. However, some members of the community still wanted to run Ubuntu on their phone, and that’s why UBPorts community decided to carry on development on their own and released their first stable Ubuntu Touch image for supported smartphones last summer. A phone running Ubuntu Touch is great, but you’d have a very limited set of app to play with, so the developers are now working on adding support for Android apps support. There are various ways to implement such features, but they went with Anbox, as it executes Android apps natively in a container, which does not compromise performance and usability as the […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on Anbox Allows You to Run Android Apps Natively in Ubuntu Linux

Anbox Allows You to Run Android Apps Natively in Ubuntu Linux

It’s been possible to run Android app in computers for a while with solutions such as Bluestacks or ShashLik, as well as running Android-x86 ISO in a virtual machine. But all those solutions rely on emulation, may not have the best performance, and at the time I tried them did not really work well, or were inconvenient to use. Anbox is different as instead of running its own Linux kernel for Android, it leverages the Linux kernel in Ubuntu for better integration and performance, and use an LXC container to run Android. Anbox has been tested with Ubuntu 16.04, but should also work with other recent Ubuntu distributions. Installing Anbox (Alpha) is easy, and can be done with a single command line:

The command will modify your system with the following: Add the anbox-support ppa ppa:morphis/anbox-support to the host system Install the anbox-modules-dkms deb package from the ppa which will add kernel modules for ashmem and binder which are required […]

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