Hello, dear readers!
This month we are introducing you to the first group of balena Ambassadors. We also held a Release Party that focused on getting the team together to improve our balenaCloud docs.
Check out this month’s community spotlights, some new blocks on balenaHub, and see our two new job openings this month! Read on for more details.
News from balenaHQ
Introducing the balena Ambassador Program!
We invited seven outstanding members of the balena community to join our brand new ambassador program. Watch this space because we are sure you will be seeing a lot more of them soon.
Improving balenaCloud Docs
For this latest Release Party, we made a team competition out of improving our docs, and live streamed the experience for everyone to get a look behind the scenes.
Building with Blocks
In our latest IoT Happy Hour episode, we were joined by the balena Hardware Hackers who demoed building an app using the two newest blocks (Sensor and Pulse) on balenaHub.
Charlie’s Tips N Tricks
Every month, Charlie the CLI unicorn gives us a useful product builder tip. Did you know you can use livepush alongside custom monitors like webpack-dev-server or nodemon?
Special case programs can be extremely fast, and livepush does not stop you from using them!. Use the dev-cmd-live directive to override the existing Dockerfile’s CMD when running livepush, and then choose your program of choice.
Visit this repo to learn more about livepush and its directives.
Projects of the month
What’s new on balenaHub this month?
Here’s a round up of all these new projects for you to check out:
- Sensor Block – Auto-detects connected i2c sensors
- Pulse Block – A block for counting pulses on a Raspberry Pi GPIO pin
Head over to balenaHub to check these new apps out.
Community projects of the month
Create a real time inventory of your fridge
Forget your grocery list? This Hackster project keeps a real time inventory of your fridge on your phone, so you will never be left guessing again!
Build a simulated drone swarm
Drones are pretty cool, and swarms of them are becoming an increasingly popular use case. Check out this tutorial, posted to our forum by one of our fantastic community members who has used balena and ArduPilot to build a drone swarm simulation.
Get ready for bird watching this spring
Check out this community-built, step-by-step bird watcher project tutorial that features the balenaFin. Get started on it quickly via balenaHub.
Job openings
We’re looking for a number of roles for our growing team. Could any of these fit you?
Check them out or introduce yourself to us via open call. We’d love to get to know you better.
Hang out with us
Join us for IoT Happy Hour
We’re postponing our physical events to practice safe social distancing and keep our team safe and healthy. Instead, meet with us virtually during our weekly IoT Happy Hour!
Every Friday at 16:00 UTC, join our live stream to see IoT project builds, discuss hardware and software, talk shop, answer community questions, and more. All of our previous episodes are available on our YouTube channel, too.
