We were at Embedded Linux Conference in Prague last month and it was a whirlwind of activity. There was a high level of excitement around Hosted Mender -- we are working with a large number of participants in our beta program to harden it and if you’d like to participate in our beta program, please let us know!
Otherwise, a common thread we came across is that many people have come to realize how software updates is one of the most important capabilities in their connected device. Yet we still hear of many creating their own OTA solution despite the many open source projects available on this, including our own Mender project! And we do understand - it is easy to underestimate the amount of work and maintenance. The concept of updating is simple in theory -- you are just copying files over to the target device. But in the context of a connected embedded system, there are many considerations to make sure the update process is both secure and robust. And there are additional nuances with a resource constrained device that can brick in the field for a variety of reasons. We’ll be introducing more content on why homegrown updaters are simply a venture no device owners or manufacturers should take upon themselves with so many freely available options available to them.