 Hey, my name is Daniel. I work for Toradex and we are today here in Vancouver, BC at the Linaro Connect. Let me introduce here to Tyler from Founderys.io and Stefan Ognar also from Toradex. Hi, so who are you? Hey, so my name is Stefan Ognar. I work in the software development team at Toradex and we so Toradex does computer on modules like this one and we, so I'm actually from the team which does software for those modules and we are currently working on a new software offering, a new software platform, which is based on the Linux micro-platforms, which Tyler from Founderys.io can tell you more about. So I'm Tyler Baker from Founderys.io, I'm the Chief Technology Officer and we're building micro-platforms, so you might wonder what micro-platforms are. So specifically the Linux micro-platform is a minimal, secure, updateable operating system based on Open Embedded in Yachto that we're providing as kind of a platform as a service to people that are developing system on modules, to people that are makers that have low-cost development boards and companies that want to build secure IoT products. So maybe since you've worked with our product a little bit, you can tell everybody, you know, what things you found to be nice about them and maybe where they need to improve. And kind of maybe what your guys' vision is for the micro-platforms on the Toradex hardware. Yeah, sure. So we found it really easy to port it because it's Open Embedded based, Toradex uses Open Embedded BSP since quite a while. So that fitted in very well with our offering, current offering. And the nice thing is so with Linux micro-platform containers are kind of the main focus and what Fandri Zaju delivered us is a working kind of container environment and with also with the whole updating built-in. So we basically managed to port Linux micro-platform to three of our modules within two weeks or so. So that was really rather easy to get it up and running. And we are now kind of continuing optimize what we have from Linux micro-platforms to extend offering on more modules and also to extend the usability from point of view for development, to develop containers and the whole stack. So for example, it runs on one of these? Yes, exactly. So this is actually the Colibri iMix 7. This is the first one we had up and running. So on that one we can now already run Linux micro-platform just fine. So what are these micro-platforms? How does it really help? Right. So what we're seeing in the industry as a whole is there's a need to provide a software platform that has the update frameworks built in and sort of security also baked into that equation because what we're finding with people developing products is that security and updates usually come at the end of product development and they're kind of an afterthought. So whether those products actually ship with any sort of reasonable security is kind of on a company or company by company basis or product by product basis. So what we want to do is enable people building products to not have to think about that stuff and provide them with a reference. So our over-the-air updates software for the Linux micro-platform is based on OTA Plus. It's a open source community addition that implements Uptane and Uptane is a security mechanism for delivering secure firmware over the air that can basically is immutable that has privacy and it allows verification from third parties. So we think it's a good solution to allow our Linux micro-platform customers to update their software over the air. What we also do is provide continuous updates. So it's our belief that the latest software is the most secure software. And so we want to enable and make it easy for customers to use the latest software. So again, we use open embedded in Yachto and we constantly rebase that. And again, the Linux kernel as well. So we constantly move to the latest release version of Linux kernel on our micro-platform. So when you do buy subscription from us, you'll get the latest software that you can literally click on a dashboard and update your devices in the field if you want to. And that's given as a reference. We also provide every bit of software as open source. So you can reproduce the entire stack Linux micro-platform in any cloud parts that you may have that we may provide as a reference, you know, at your own office or your own lab or wherever you need to do it. You can even give it out to customers and have them deploy it. So everything's open, there's no vendor lock in, and that's kind of what we're going for with the Linux micro-platform. So micro-platform sounds like a small little, it's not a lot of data to transfer? Or is it because IoT doesn't want to have so much data, right? Sometimes? Well, I mean, I think that's what IoT is, it's all about the data. But like Stefan said, was, you know, it's just a Docker runtime. So what we're trying to do is modularize the boundaries between the base operating system and the application. Typically when you build embedded systems, you bundle that all together. And so it's hard to update or there's there's dependencies that need to be shared between multiple applications and there's no level of isolation. So the idea is update the base operating system independently of the containers. And even with the containers, they can be updated independently. So what this allows you to achieve is that you can update just the piece of software that you need to, whether that's the base operating system or the applications running on the device and do it in a seamless way. And I think, you know, from working with cloud tools and developing cloud applications, these concepts aren't new, but they're very new to embed it. So we want to bring the concepts of enterprise that's happening in the data center down to the edge, or even smaller devices. So that's kind of our goal is to standardize that in an embedded package and make it easy for customers to consume that, like Toradex and others really. So how's it been to work with Toradex? Oh, it's been great. I can't say enough about their engineering team. They have very bright guys like we do. They understand open source software. They work upstream. So when we forge this relationship, I think everything kind of just fell into place. And, you know, we have a really good synergy. So what do you think right now? We are very happy to work with them. And we are really going to extend now on that. That's basically our base. And then we add additional value on top. So really focusing on the ease of use. So we have still a lot of people from the Microsoft ecosystem. So we will provide a container tooling integration with Visual Studio and other Microsoft technology like .NET. So people can easily migrate from Windows or from Windows CE to this platform. We also have other tools and specialty for exact our platform. So downstream support or special tooling for GPIOs and so on. So really make the life easier for the developers. And then also we have a big ecosystem. And we really now begin to onboard them to that whole container concept. So we talk with our partners like Qt, Codesys and many others to see how we can bring them on. And that should be even easier than it's already today to integrate this partner technology into our models. So very exciting. Can you say something more about what's so special about this Linux micro? Yeah, so for us really one very interesting thing, additional what Tyler already said is really that it's for the ease of use. So containers really allow a much easier over-the-air update. It allows easier to integrate with all the partner. It allows us easier to integrate development tools which then can easily remove for deployment. So for us it's all really get the time to mark it down, make it safe and make it in a way you can actually deploy it into volume product. So it's not just for development or anything like that. It's really good for development, but you can then take it with very little changes and deploy it into a volume production. And all the stuff that Linaro is doing maybe also in the light group, right, and getting all the latest updates that has not just to do with security, but I guess new functionalities. Exactly. Yeah, so it just gets quickly into there. Yeah, because the light group works upstream on the Zephyr project, and we also at foundries.io work upstream on the Zephyr project. So that's kind of our goal is to keep involved in these projects like the Linux kernel, like Zephyr, like open embedded in Yachto, and really keep a pulse on what's happening upstream and also contribute. So we have very short forks when we do things. So we may have to do some stabilization for the micro platforms between release to release, but all those patches and all those issues are sorted upstream. So that the next release we do, we have to carry less patches. And so we're always constantly working our technical debt down. And so by working with the light team at Linaro on Zephyr and the Linux Foundation, that's our goal is to keep the technical debt low and the Delta from upstream software very, very minimal. And could you say something about, because I guess many different people around the world, they want different things, but is it possible to do different things with this platform? Like, can people customize? Is it customization? Yeah, I think that's exactly that is actually a really strong point with Linux Micro Platform. So since it's really based, it's kind of container native, you can really easily add containers. You can easily run different kind of containers from different partners or vendors, which makes it really easier to kind of use our product with many different kind of software stacks. And yeah, we currently have it running on three modules. We will release first public beta of that soon. So watch out for that. And then you should be ready to get containers running on our modules really quickly. Nice. So this is pretty cool stuff. And is it like, has something similar happened before or is it like revolutionary? Well, I guess, so containers in embedded start to be maybe a thing since a year or so, but we're really early here. So there are very few kind of similar projects yet on the market that there's still a lot of details which we need to resolve. So this is still work in progress in general. But it's definitely something rather new and exciting. Are you expecting potentially you have something going on right here where you could be in the middle of all IoT in the future? I mean, that's what we'd like because, I mean, let's look at the current state of IoT. Security is kind of like non-existent or there's really bad practices. So by inserting the micro platform into this IoT market, we're hoping that it gives a lot of flexibility to customers and B improves the overall security of the market and allows companies to ship updates and consumers get used to receiving updates and it's a normal thing because I've said this before, but there's two things we know about software. There is always going to be bugs in the code and that security is hard and it's never going to be easy. So what we can do is just get into this cadence of taking updates using the latest software because that's where all these things are being fixed. So I think the days of LTS kernels, at least I'm hoping that those are going to kind of go by the wayside and everybody in the industry adopts this. I realize that that's not an easy thing to do, but we're trying to make it easier with the Linux micro platform and that's the goals to make it easy to adopt the latest software. Are customers going to brand products by saying, hey, there's going to be future support because it has this? It's hard to say. The micro platform is obviously a trademark and we'd like people to use that brand as much as they want and they can attach their own to it if they'd like as well as long as they use the micro platform brand. So what do you think so far about the linear connect and how's it been? Yeah, very good. So we learned a lot about machine learning which is other a big focus of Toradex. We have already a lot of customer from the Nvidia part and it's great here to make more connection and I'm sure you also see a lot there from Toradex coming to make machine learning deep learning easier on embedded devices. So this is an exciting time and an exciting industry and you are, you're both, you're all leaders, kind of, right? What we're looking at right here is maybe the platform of the future. I mean, you are delivering, the industry takes you as what's called a leader already, right? Yeah, I hope so. Especially now in embedded computer models, I think so. Sure, you're one of the leading company. This is really bleeding edge technology which we make ready for industrial deployments. So yeah, very, very exciting. For the long tail of many customized projects, that's what it is. Exactly. So we are really good in small to medium volume. So if you have 500 pieces, thousands, 10,000, 10, it's great. I mean, there is other companies if you want to deploy 200,000 pieces a year, that's not really our focus. But if you have 1,000, 10,000, then Toradex is really your partner and we really, really, really deliver.