Last month, The Zephyr Project participated in The Linux Foundation’s Embedded Linux Conference + OpenIoT Summit North America in Portland, Oregon. Around 730 embedded and IoT technologists from 360 companies and 31 countries around the globe attended the event to collaborate with experts on a wide range of topics of embedded Linux and industrial IoT issues. This was an increase from last year, making this an important industry event for embedded and IoT developers with 12 keynotes and some 90 breakout sessions. In fact, 75% of attendees have already said they are planning on attending next year.
The Zephyr Project had a strong presence at the show. Jonathan Corbet, Author, Kernel Developer and Executive Editor of LWN.net, mentioned Zephyr OS during his keynote for ELC. He mentioned how more developers are using Zephyr RTOS because of its small lightweight permissively licensing system and how open source projects like this one is the future of technology. You can watch the video of Jonathan’s keynote here.
Jonathan Corbet on stage during his keynote
The Zephyr Project, which was a Bronze sponsor for the show, had a booth in the technical and demo showcase. Featured demos included ones from Open Source Foundries, which showcased the LWM2M Device Management, LWM2M on AT&T LTE, which demonstrated the latest Zephyr code and LWM2M working over AT&T’s LTE network and Bluetooth Mesh in action on BBC micro:bit boards.
Demos at the Zephyr booth
Each day of the conference, the showcase hall was packed with attendees who wanted to learn about the latest projects and products, view hands-on demos and interact with other community members. 98% of attendees survey said they visited sponsor booths.
Zephyr members and experts on the first day of the show
Additionally, around 20 Zephyr technical experts attended the event from companies including Intel, Linaro, Nordic Semiconductor, Synopsys and Open Source Foundries, to present sessions related to Zephyr development and collaborate with other projects. Please see below for a few of the Zephyr sessions and links to the presentations:
Zephyr LTS Release: What to expect and why are we doing this
Anas Nashif, a Software Architect for Intel’s Open Source Technology Centre, presented a session that discussed the features of Zephyr LTS, such as stable APIs and the goal of taking a subset of the released project code through various certification activities, and next steps. The presentation can be found here.
Zephyr and MCUBoot as Foundations for Secure IOT Products
Marti Bolivar, a Senior Engineer for Open Source Foundries, gave a talk about Zephyr and MCUBoot as Foundations for Secure IoT Products. This talk describes a concrete, open source IoT application based on Zephyr, MCUBoot, and LWM2M, as well as the developer tooling and security model underlying it. It focused on the practical application of these tools, rather than an abstract discussion of the components themselves. The presentation is available for review here.
Johan Hedberg, a Senior Software Engineer for Intel, showcased how Bluetooth Mesh works with Zephyr OS and Linux. The presentation gave an introduction to Bluetooth Mesh, covering how it works and what kind of features it provides, as well as an overview of how it is supported in Zephyr OS and Linux and how to create new wireless solutions with them. See the presentation here.
Building IPv6 Mesh Network with Zephyr OS
Ravi Kumar Veeramally, a Software Engineer for Intel, gave a presentation about building IPv6 mesh network with Zephyr OS. This presentation detailed how to make use of Zephyr networking to utilize multiple interfaces (Ethernet and 802.15.4) and form a mesh network and control leaf nodes in the network. An 802.15.4 interface forms an RPL mesh network and Ethernet interface provides a web interface that shows and controls the mesh network leaf nodes. The web interface also displays the topology of the mesh network. Technologies involved here are Ethernet and 802.15.4, 6lowpan, IPv4/6, RPL, TCP, UDP, HTTP, Websocket and CoAP. See the presentation here.
Zephyr™ Now Supports OMA LwM2M protocol! What Can It Do For Me?
Michael Scott, an Embedded Software Engineer for Open Source Foundries, offered an interactive discussion about how Zephyr OS now supports OMA LwM2M Protocol and what that means for developers. He shared how the library has evolved from the 1.9 release through what’s available in the master branch of Zephyr today (to be released as 1.11) as well as broke down typical hardware configurations and instructions for testing the Zephyr LwM2M client via QEMU and connecting to a LwM2M server. See the presentation here.
Retrofitting Zephyr Memory Protection
Andrew Boie, a Senior Software Engineer for Intel, shared a presentation about how to retrofit memory protection in the Zephyr OS. This talk presented the work performed to retrofit memory protection in the Zephyr kernel, discussing the constraints, design decisions (affecting portability, security, and performance), its current state, and the next steps. He discussed details on a novel method of tracking and validating kernel objects, techniques for defining system calls with a minimal amount of boilerplate code, details on our APIs for managing memory permissions, and implications of the recently unveiled Meltdown and Spectre bugs and their implications for Zephyr. See the presentation here.
Flexible IoT Solutions using Zephyr and JavaScript
Brian Jones, a Software Engineer for Intel, offered a look at how flexible IoT solutions use Zephyr RTOS and JavaScript. He details the core concepts, use cases, and demos to illustrate how it all works. The presentation is available for review here.
Photos from a few of the Zephyr sessions
Overall, the Zephyr Project was well represented at ELC OpenIoT Summit. If you missed it, you can catch Zephyr at the next conference. Zephyr will be at LinuxCon China, which is co-located with ContainerCon China and CloudOpen China on June 25-27 at the China National Convention Center in Beijing. See below list of topics Zephyr will be presenting:
Retrofitting Memory Protection in the Zephyr OS – Wayne Ren, Synopsys
On Monday, June 25, Wayne Ren, a Senior Software at Synopsys, is doing a talk about Retrofitting Memory Protection in the Zephyr OS. Click here to add it to your schedule.
Introduction to the Zephyr Project – Ryan Qian, NXP & Kate Stewart, The Linux Foundation
On Tuesday, June 26, Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Programs for The Linux Foundation, and Ryan Qian, a software Engineer at NXP, will provide an Introduction to the Zephyr Project. Click here to add it to your schedule.
Stay tuned for more and come see us at LinuxCon China!
