16 November 2021 / Last updated: 16 Nov 2021

balena monthly roundup - November 2021

Hello dear readers,

Remember, balenaHub Challenge entries (for a chance to win cash and be featured on Etcher) are due at the end of November. Good luck and have fun!

Catch up with a few of our virtual workshops from the last few weeks below. From the Labs, we have a home curtain automation project and a sneak peek at a robotics-focused balenaBlock. As always, see our community highlights and open roles at balena.

The latest from balena

Last call for balenaHub Challenge entries

We’re challenging developers worldwide to build an IoT Project or Fleet, and add it to our growing marketplace, balenaHub to share it with the world. Submit your work by November 30 2021 for a chance of winning a cash prize and a feature on balenaEtcher.

Build one (or many) robots with balena

One of our Hardware Hackers gave us a sneak peek at a robotics block-- the beginning of how we plan to reduce friction for robot developers using balena at any scale.

Next-level home automation: smart curtains

Driven by a desire to automate how light enters the home to improve sleep, one of our balenaLabs residents built this smart curtain project.

balenaPodcast Episode 5: Consilience, and how to understand everything

Tom Beakbane, author of How to Understand Everything: Consilience: A New Way to See the World, joined our podcast to explain what consilience is, and how the practice can help us have a deeper understanding of one another and of the world around us. Check out the recording of the episode.

This month on balenaHub

Check out some of our newest Open Fleets, Projects and Blocks on balenaHub.

Nextcloud - A safe home for all your data!
Motorules-curtains - Move stepper motors to automate your curtains.
nodeRED-mqtt - Build a Node-RED app with MQTT mosquitto.
Ockam (block) - A library for end-to-end encrypted messaging.
Tailscale (block) - Run a Tailscale mode on a balena device.

Community highlights

Send us your edge project questions and we’ll answer them live

It has been fun to answer community questions about edge projects on the last few IoT Project Clinic episodes (catch up on ep. 03 and ep. 04). If you have a project that you’d like to show off or want to ask questions live head over to the Forums and let us know.

Build your first edge AI device the easy way

Catch up (or re-watch) the balena workshop at the Arm Dev Summit, where we demonstrated how to build your first fully functional edge AI device using a Jetson Nano, containerized services, and balenaCloud.

Scale your fleet of TinyML solutions

Ambassador Mithun shared his proof of concept that shows how easy it is to deploy a fleet of edge devices running a TinyML model with object detection capability using AWS IoT, Edge Impulse, and balena.

Monitor device fleet health wit the Datadog IoT agent

We hung out with Datadog this month to learn how to easily gather IoT diagnostic information, logs, and other telemetry data. Check out the video to learn how to add a Datadog IoT Agent container to a device and interpret the data.

Work with us

We’re looking for a number of roles for our growing team.

Hardware Engineer
Generalist
Operations Manager
Data Lead
Site Reliability Engineer (Americas)
Site Reliability Engineer (EMEA)

Check them out, or if you think you could be a great fit for balena, design your own role and introduce yourself to us via open call. We’d love to get to know you better.

Join the next IoT Project Clinic!

The balenaLabs team welcomes experienced edge developers, makers, and builders to come and talk shop, ask questions, and get new ideas.

Submit your questions for the next live show on this forum thread, tweet us using the hashtag #IoTClinic or leave a comment on one of our YouTube videos.