Happy new year, dear readers!
Let’s kick off the new year with some exciting news– EtcherPro pre-orders are now open. Use it to flash up to 16 SD cards, USB sticks, or devices at once, without a computer. Order yours today.
We added a few improvements to balenaCloud as well: check out our recently-added Organizations feature and updated sidebar navigation. The easier you can manage your teams and device fleets, the smoother the project work becomes.
From the lab, we introduced balenaBlocks, lightweight containerized IoT app functionality that you can add to your next project. We also revised our NVIDIA guide to make it a lot easier to get started with edge AI using a Jetson device and balena.
Catch up on community highlights and new balenaHub apps as well. Take care and have a great start to the new year.
News from balenaHQ
Pre-order EtcherPro today
We’re taking preorders of EtcherPro, including reservations for our 50 Special Edition metallic gray units. Visit our store for more information and to reserve your EtcherPro!
Try our new collaboration and organization tools
Add new layers of coordination to your balenaCloud account using Organizations. Create organizations and teams, and manage which members can access which applications. Now available for all users.
Improving how you navigate balenaCloud
During our recent Release Party, the team assembled and deployed new updates to the balenaCloud sidebar navigation to better reflect how fleet owners and product builders (like you) collaborate and work together.
The latest from our blog
Get to know balenaBlocks
To reduce the friction in IoT app development, we created balenaBlocks– lightweight, container images that bring functions like web browsing, bluetooth connectivity, data transfer, and more to your next edge project.
Build an edge AI project with NVIDIA Jetson and balena
Hardware Hacker Alan pared down the code required to get going with Jetson devices and balena. We updated his getting started guide that gets anyone interested in edge AI on their way toward success.
Charlie’s Tips N Tricks
If you have Docker installed on your workstation, you can use balena preload to add your applications to any balenaOS image file. It looks something like this:
When you flash the preloaded image to an SD card, your device will boot balenaOS and run your containers without having to download any code. See our docs for more info.
Projects of the month
Try these newly-added balenaHub apps
We added these new balenaHub apps over the holiday– consider it a late gift from us to you all. Check them out or contribute your own projects.
- AdGuard: block ads and tracking on your home network
- UptimeRobot: an open source way to monitor website uptime
- Node-RED: Use Node-RED and balena
- Home Assistant: control and monitor home automation tools
- Bird Watcher: Classify visiting birds with edge AI
- Bluetooth Router: share an internet connection over Bluetooth
- NextCloud: Access and share data from any of your devices, on your terms
Check out this chirp-classifying bird feeder
This clever bird feeder uses Edge Impulse and a balenaFin to classify visiting birds by face and voice. Nice work, Mithun Das!
Monitoring bees with balena
Catch up on community member Alex’s “PoE hack” to connect his EnviroPlus and Pi Zero via USB, as well as the rest of his epic beekeeping project.
Reading analog sensors with a balenaFin and Node-RED
The folks at Datacake are mixing up a lightweight way to collect and monitor analog sensor data. Check out the progress.
Job opening: Lead Security Engineer
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.
