Canonical shows EdgeX on ARM

Beginning in March, I have been assigned to the Linaro organisation to carry on the work with the LITE (Linaro IoT and Embedded) group by researching design and development of software for ARM-based gateway devices. One of my main focus points has been to investigate how complex it would be to run EdgeX on ARM.

EdgeX (https://www.edgexfoundry.org/) is an IoT framework developed and recently open sourced by Dell. The goal of this Linux Foundation backed project is to provide a common open framework for IoT edge computing. It is designed to be agnostic from the hardware and the underlying OS, yet provide flexibility and standardization resulting in lower development costs and faster time to market. Canonical has been involved in the EdgeX development from the very beginning. Currently Tony Espy of Canonical holds a committee chair position of the EdgeX Device and Device SDK working group.

I was video interviewed during the Linaro Connect San Francisco event in September 2017. In it, I talk about the results of my R&D work around the EdgeX on ARM topic showcasing a cross-host setup where the EdgeX core is running on an Ubuntu Core based Dell Edge gateway next to the EdgeX Device service that is running on ARM (Ubuntu based Raspberry Pi). At the time of this conference, to the best of my knowledge, it was the first time such a solution has been presented. It proves that EdgeX, together with Ubuntu, can be successfully used to couple one high-end master gateway with multiple satellite gateways that, for cost reduction, could use lower end hardware.

The work presented here will continue with work on EdgeX now under active development with ongoing efforts to provide a Go-based SDK. At the same time, Canonical is putting its time into integrating EdgeX with snaps (https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy) so that it can be easily managed on edge devices.

References:

1. EdgeX Foundry https://www.edgexfoundry.org
2. Linaro https://www.linaro.org/
3. Ubuntu Core https://www.ubuntu.com/core