Hey there balena fans! We have a few important product updates to catch you up on this month– a new deprecation policy for the SDK and CLI, and rolling out delta updates for the host OS to make fleet updates more efficient.
For the tinkerers out there, we have new projects like our wireless printing project, our skin temperature sensor, and Wi-Fi repeater. As always, we have a few community projects to highlight, and if you haven’t checked out our weekly IoT Happy Hour, please do (and hear our catchy balena-ified guitar cover).
News from balenaHQ
Deltas for host OS updates available
Keep balena OS updated fleet-wide without the massive bill or maintenance time. Delta updates for the host OS requests balena servers to provide only the differences between the old and new container image.
Deltas are smaller updates, and now you get them for the host too, not just for your apps. Check out our docs to learn more.
Deprecation policies to balena-sdk and CLI
We now have a deprecation policy on balena-sdk and balena-cli. If you or your teams use these modules, please upgrade to at least one of the following versions:
plaintext
balena-sdk (node) v12.12.0
plaintext
balena-sdk-python v7.8.0
plaintext
balena-cli v11.13.0
See the documentation or read the post for more information.
The latest from our blog
Extend your internet access to add more places to WFH
Use this guide to turn a Raspberry Pi into a Wi-Fi access point or repeater. Now you can work from home in the garden, the garage, the yard, and more.
Build your own handheld temperature scanner
Transform a Raspberry Pi and a thermal scanner into a tool to detect skin temperature.
Breathe wireless life into your old printer
With a spare Raspberry Pi and this guide, you can make your old printer wirelessly accessible!
Charlie’s Tips N Tricks
Use balena-idle to help with debugging
Our base images now come with the balena-idle utility. Call balena-idle in your scripts and it’ll keep the container idling.
This is helpful when debugging or if you execute a command that exits immediately! There are options to change to message or interval between each message (-m and -i).
Projects of the month
Catch a community spotlight and the “balena theme song”
Our community guest from IoT Happy Hour ep. 9 set a new bar by not only showing off a multitude of projects, but also playing a balena-themed guitar cover. Thanks, Matthew!
Check out the amazing projects from the Virtually Maker Faire
We got the privilege of sharing four of our projects during the Virtually Maker Faire. Check those out on our YouTube channel, and also take a look at hundreds of other amazing projects that went on throughout the weekend event.
Thanks for including us in your ambitious 3D printing build, @thebigredgeek
It’s alive! I just built a cloud-native programmer for the atmega328(p) chip on top of the @Raspberry_Pi zero w, @balena_io, a custom pcb milled from a @Sain_Smart #genmitsu and a case printed from #PLA on a heavily modified @Creality3dprint #ender3. All done from scratch
— Andrew (@thebigredgeek) May 23, 2020
It makes us all smile when our tools help unlock someone’s vision. What will you all build next?
Now hiring: Technical Sales Lead/Sales Engineer
Want to enable developers to succeed in IoT and edge computing by helping them deploy and manage large fleets of devices across the globe?
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. Join our next session!
