16 September 2019 / Last updated: 17 Sep 2019
balena monthly roundup - September 2019
Big news from balenaHQ! Since the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 back in June we’ve been working tirelessly to bring support to balenaOS. Our work has resulted in the first, fully-functional, 64-bit OS for the Raspberry Pi 4, allowing you to mix and match multiple container architectures on this new device.
In addition to this groundbreaking work, we’ve put together a very detailed account of the EtcherPro development process. We’ve covered the various design challenges and iterations in great detail which, in this writer’s opinion, makes for a great read.
We’ve also finalized the date and opened ticket sales for our 2019 Hackathon in Barcelona! It’s a great opportunity to get started with balena and meet some of the team you may have chatted to on support or in the forums; we’ll all be there.
After that we have our usual community contributions, this month showcasing management of Arduino devices and a neat flight tracking setup.
See you next month!
News from balenaHQ
First fully functional 64-bit OS for the Raspberry Pi 4
Today, we are excited to announce the release of 64-bit balenaOS for the Raspberry Pi 4, providing support for the full 4GB of memory and allowing the simultaneous, side-by-side running of 32-bit and 64-bit Docker containers - a first for the Raspberry Pi 4!
balenaCloud dashboard update
We released a long-awaited update to our dashboard last month, letting you pin applications or devices to specific releases!
A really demanded use of this feature is rolling out updates to your application gradually, or testing new releases on specific devices only before releasing to the entire fleet. You can ensure 'key' devices are pinned to a stable release and only allowed to upgrade when you let them.
The feature opens up a lot of possibilities, all of which aim to make your life as an IoT fleet owner a lot easier.
Join us for the 2019 balena Hackathon!
Barcelona - October 26th
Whether you’re new to IoT development or an experienced hardware hacker looking to take your skills to the next level, we’d love for you to join us at our 2019 Hackathon.
We’ll show you how to build IoT projects using powerful development tools from the web and cloud. We'll use Docker and balena to write, build & deploy software for Raspberry Pis to control LEDs, take input, read from sensors, and more. Sample projects will be provided to get you started, but what you build is completely up to you!
Spaces are limited, so visit our Eventbrite page and reserve your spot soon!
The latest from our blog
Taming the 'hard' in hardware in 8 steps - a product development journey
In 2017, we embarked on a mission to build the ultimate flashing media. As a software company, we didn't realize the hornet's nest that we had stepped into. Little did we anticipate that in the process, we would end up re-examining the wheel at every step, going through eight design iterations and creating our own board from scratch. We share the entire 8 step product development journey in great detail.
Install a balenaFin outdoors, for use as a LoRa gateway, flight tracker, weather station and more!
Back in May we looked at deploying the software to run a balenaFin as a TTN LoRa Gateway, in this post we look at the natural progression from this; mounting the hardware up a mast and making the installation more permanent. The techniques we look at here will allow us to install hardware in a weatherproof enclosure outdoors which can then be used for a variety of applications such as the planned LoRa gateway, or weather monitoring, or ADS-B flight tracking, and any other application where having outdoor hardware is beneficial.
Projects of the month
Every month we like to feature a few projects built by the community, this month it’s:
- *Manage, monitor, and update hundreds of Arduino devices for a shop installation: First up, @tmigone has been at it again, and has documented how balenaCloud was used with Raspberry Pis and a NUC to manage, monitor, and update hundreds of Arduino devices for a shop installation.
- balena ADS-B Multi-Service Flight Tracker: Secondly, you may have seen it mentioned on our Twitter account already but just in case you missed it, @ketilmo has built and published a balena ADS-B Multi-Service Flight Tracker. This project enables you to receive positional information directly from aircraft passing overhead and share it with services such as Flightradar and Flightaware (and more). The best part is these sites will give you free premium access in return for the data!
Feel free to give them a try and let the world know how you get on in the forums; the authors of these projects would love to know how you’re using them.
Events
| Internet of Things conference | Bilbao, ES | Oct 22 - 25, 2019 |
| IoT Workshop and Hackathon with balena | Barcelona, ES | Oct 26, 2019 |
| Hackaday Superconference | Pasadena, CA, US | Nov 15 - 17, 2019 |
| KubeCon CloudNativeCon North America | San Diego, CA, US | Nov 18 - 21, 2019 |
| Hackaday Superconference | Amsterdam, NL | Jan 31, 2020 |
