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Mongoose OS – An Open Source Operating System for the Internet of Things

185 points by j4mie 9y ago

dmitriid 9y ago
> FEATURED COMMUNITY PROJECTS > Door bell - ESP32, AWS IoT > Door sensor - ESP32, MC-38, AWS IoT/MQTT, SNS > Smart heater on AWS IoT > IoT doorbell that works via MQTT - generic MQTT server, AWS IoT, Google IoT, etc Why the hell would I want my door bell be controlled via MQTT on AWS?
- pzduniak 9y ago
  Probably to make use of their whole IoT platform, such as https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/ https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/. I still wouldn't use it over a properly architected local solution (being a software architect with focus on security), but if you _really_ don't want to write the non-feature-specific code then I suppose their stuff isn't that bad.
- yetihehe 9y ago
  To know when someone ring your doorbell but you are not in home so that you can connect through voip to speakerphone near doorbell and speak with someone who stands before your door. It's probably one of first examples, like "Hello World!". Who in their right mind would write hello world, they are written for all languages already.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  There's actually a very good use case if you have sleeping children: https://www.alittletothewright.com/index.php/2017/05/doorbell-smartener/ https://www.alittletothewright.com/index.php/2017/05/doorbel...
  - swsieber 9y ago
    Indeed. We just bought a house and I'm excited to actually invest (in terms of electronic projects). Top thing on my list is to make the doorbell send a notification when our little one is sleeping, instead of sounding.
    - cjsuk 9y ago
      From experience you want to get them used to noise rather then keeping things quiet. With the first child, I made the mistake of hanging out of the window at 10PM trying to get the attention of the pizza guy so he didn't ring the door bell so we got to eat in peace. By the third child, you could set a firework off in the living room and she'd stay in bed. Be noisy! Be free!
- planb 9y ago
  It's not on AWS but runs on a local raspberry pi, but my doorbell signals via MQTT that someone ringed. This makes my security camera take a picture and sends a push notification to a custom made iOS app which shows who's in front of the door on my apple watch. If I'm logged in my home wifi, I can even open the door with a button directly from this notification. I would argue that I'm not the only one who finds that useful.
  - GordonS 9y ago
    Is "signalizes" a word? Did you mean "signals"?
    - planb 9y ago
      Thanks, I've corrected it.
- JigglyGigalo 9y ago
  So that anything else that is connected to AWS can control your doorbell. Maybe the doorbell could have different sounds depending on what service (pizza, Amazon,friends) is on its way or just pulling up to the driveway right now. I think a smart doorbell is a great idea for a product.
robinduckett 9y ago
Bit of a confusing name, when there is already an extremely popular mongodb node.js framework called Mongoose
- jordiburgos 9y ago
  Not the first and not the last: spark(hadoop tool vs java framework), yarn (hadoop tool vs facebook pkg manager), ...
- petepete 9y ago
  Mongoose, not to be confused with Mongoose. https://metacpan.org/pod/Mongoose https://metacpan.org/pod/Mongoose
  - ojosilva 9y ago
    This one is the best named of the 3. It's actually a simple contraction of Mongo + Moose, the two key libraries used in the project.
- mijoharas 9y ago
  Also confusing as there is a small mammal that eats snakes called mongoose.
  - rena-anju 9y ago
    Also confusing when there is a vehicle in the Halo series called Mongoose. Confusing, confusing...
  - tschellenbach 9y ago
    its quite a cool mammal :)
- tomovo 9y ago
  Also an embeddable http server.
  - 9y ago
kierenj 9y ago
You had me until the "Pricing" section. The Old Way - Varies, depends on many factors. Requires ongoing investments, hiring developers or integrators The New Way - GPLv2 license: FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE / Commercial License: CONTACT US So with Mongoose OS, you don't have to invest, or hire developers? Am I being unfair by thinking that, while the other points make life easier, this is scraping the barrel a bit? Why not just say "and the price which gets you all of these advantages is.." ?
- Spivak 9y ago
  Are you annoyed that they're selling commercial exceptions to the GPL or that they're not listing the price on the page?
  - asmithmd1 9y ago
    The latter. Just give me an idea of the order of magnitude of the price. Is a commercial license closer to $1000 or $100,000?
mijoharas 9y ago
> GPLv2 license: FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE This confuses me, the GPLv2 doesn't say anything about commercial use, it merely says that you need to redistribute the source code to anyone that you distribute your software to. Have they placed additional restrictions on the GPL (which I believe you are prohibited from doing)? or are they just trying to highlight that they are dual-licensing it under a license that isn't copyleft if you pay them (since lots of companies have no-gpl policies)?
- jpfr 9y ago
  GPL does not allow static binaries from both GPLed code and commercial code. A workaround is a plugin mechanism with dynamic loading of .dll or .so libraries. But that won't fly on a microcontroller.
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    .dll won't help with GPL, only with LGPL (IANAL)
    - yebyen 9y ago
      I think you have it backwards, if I am interpreting your very brief statement fully correctly... If you are building a library and you want it to be open source but also usable by products that are not open source, you can use LGPL. If you are building a proprietary library and you want to keep it proprietary, but link it into a GPL application, I think there is nothing is stopping you from doing that. You still have an open-source application, it just won't work without the proprietary library. (This sounds like it should be against the letter of the GPL, but as a thought experiment, pretend someone else wrote the library. Say, Nvidia, and you are Linus. You have no control over how their library gets licensed, and there is no person or body which can stop you from releasing your own code as GPL, even if it may have branches that depend on proprietary code.) Doing OSS this way is most certainly against the spirit of the GPL, but I think it is within the letter.
      - 9y ago
m-p-3 9y ago
Interesting, I'll have to look into it when I build some prototype (just a personal hobby-type of project) with my ESP8266.
grive 9y ago
> Prototyping and Scripting Engine > Micropython Moving to production (C/C++) or factoring out critical pieces to C/C++ is not trivial VS. > mJS - JavaScript engine for prototyping and C/C++ for production I don't know much about it, but from the surface it seems that the problem is exactly the same? What is the benefit of prototyping in JS instead of Python? In the end, either you refactor everything purely in C, or you use both in your production system. I see mJS does FFI to interface with other C routines. Why introduce a second language to your project? This seems like a huge overhead for no benefit (you're still expected to write C at some point). The language is only a subset of JS, so "not JS", so no ecosystem and new assumptions you have to redefine before getting serious with it? Is it just me who thinks it's a bad idea? Would someone be able to explain the advantage of going in this direction?
- wiremine 9y ago
  The advantage is time. Many (most?) embedded environments are overly difficult (IMHO), and/or proprietary. Also, even in a good environment, C/C++ typically requires more lines of code than dynamic languages like Python or JS. Therefore, the industry has been looking for ways to combat both the below par developer experience, and the development time. Samsung's Jerryscript [1] is another example. That said, I think these things are aspiration more than they are practical. [1] http://jerryscript.net/ http://jerryscript.net/ Note: Edited to clarify C++ vs. dynamic languages.
  - grive 9y ago
    Sure, I think I see the reasoning behind: reduce the time to market for embedded products. But I'm mostly wondering the actualy benefit of choosing mJS instead of micropython to do so. It seems that both are capable of handling this problem, however mJS seems aiming at a compromise between JS and C, and my opinion on this is that it will introduce huge overheads on any projects. This mostly stems from my being wary of multi-language projects. The process involved in embedded platforms seems heavy enough as it is, no need to blur the lines further.
    - wiremine 9y ago
skratlo 9y ago
But why Javascript? Clearly another hype-driven project. Please, use reason not hype when deciding on technology. This is fast food
- recursio 9y ago
  Is it not reasonable that any Joe Schmo can easily build both front end UI's and servers with one of the most adopted languages?
  - petecox 9y ago
    I'm reminded of earlier efforts using Firefox OS which sought to create a "Web of Things". I'd didn't get around to backing the Runcible project but watching Aubrey's video below, I hope it succeeds. http://janos.io/ http://janos.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgIObR6jGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgIObR6jGs http://mono.hm/ http://mono.hm/
- drozd 9y ago
  JS is for prototyping.
- wishinghand 9y ago
  C or Javascript is available.
daww 9y ago
Unfortunately the documentation is lacking and mJS (especially the ffi) is nowehere near production ready
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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Dowwie 9y ago
"The old way: Micropython" <-- what? really? old, already? They're just getting warmed up, baby.
- ageofwant 9y ago
  Damn right. Mid level python dev in my team builds Django views on one screen and programs the embedded micropython board that sits on the drill in the pit on the other, all while cajoling with his millennial tribesman in the chat app du jour. Can't beat that.
j4mie 9y ago
If I wanted to make something that (say) reports sensor readings over MQTT to AWS IoT, what firmware options are there? NodeMCU looked great (Lua!) but doesn't seem to support X509 client certificates (which AWS needs). There's Arduino, Mongoose, Micropython - any others? What's the best way to go?
dankohn1 9y ago
If you're considering embedded OS options, please look at these two (completely free) projects from the Linux Foundation: Yocto project creates a custom embedded distro based on your needs https://www.yoctoproject.org/ https://www.yoctoproject.org/ Zephyr supports hardware that can't easily run Linux https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/
- drozd 9y ago
  Sure, try to run those on e.g. TI CC3200 microcontroller.
  - sgt 9y ago
    Yocto does not seem to support CC3200.
    - drozd 9y ago
      That's right, cause Linux cannot run on the large class of microcontrollers - particularly, those with less than 4M of RAM. Mongoose OS is targeting that category.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - dankohn1 9y ago
        Zephyr is an open source OS that targets smaller microcontrollers.
hardwaresofton 9y ago
Does the world need another open source operating system for the internet of things? I wonder if creating a new one was really necessary or if they could have built on top of one that already exists. While I can't say I know intimately all the problems that need to be solved for IoT to responsibly reach mass consumption, but I'm pretty sure having an operating system wasn't the problem. Maybe this is just an enterprise cash grab?
- jaboutboul 9y ago
  It's definitely not a cash grab as the project is open source. There are many problems in this space that cannot be served using current solution, especially in environments that are super resource constrained. For example, this is made to run on a very small footprint of RAM, even smaller than what an embedded Linux distro would use.
monocasa 9y ago
I really fail to see what this brings to the table. In the section on their main page contrasting with arduino, they bascailly just say that they're more reliable, with nothing to really back that up. Looking at their documentation, I don't really see how they can make that claim. The issues with Arduino's reliability stems, IMO, from the fact that Arduino code isn't an RTOS. Ie. there's no separation of real time priorities. This also seems to not really be an RTOS either, just a fancy bare metal environment. What is this structurally bringing to the table beyond Arduino other than "we think we wrote the code better"?
- Rebelgecko 9y ago
  I'm thinking about using Mongoose for a future project (as opposed to Arduino IDE or the ESP SDK directly) I think the advantages are: Security: TLS 1.2, x509 certificates, ability to stop random people from flashing your board) Remote management: OTA process doesn't seem that different from other methods, but they have some other nice things. For example they make it really easy to separate your code from your configuration.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    > ability to stop random people from flashing your board That part in particular seems like a really bold assumption.
    - Rebelgecko 9y ago
      I haven't read over their encryption code, but even if it's not enough to stop a determined hacker it's still better than nothing.
bschwindHN 9y ago
Why don't more people use FreeRTOS? I always find it to be a nice way to coordinate all the tasks you need to run in an embedded system, without having to manage a huge kernel like Linux. It's also free so there's that...
- jaboutboul 9y ago
  This is based off of freertos
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    Is it? I looked all over the site and don't see any mentions of "FreeRTOS", "RTOS", "real time", "tasks", or anything else that would indicate it's based off of FreeRTOS.
legulere 9y ago
Written in C so we can continue enjoying IoT devices being exploited by buffer overflows.
p4bl0 9y ago
It's sad that security isn't one of the homepage sell points of this OS. It feels like IoT is severly in need of serious "security by design". OS level would be a good start.
- jaboutboul 9y ago
  Security is actually one of the most important pieces of this puzzle and the team is one of the team's top priorities. Agreed it would be good to talk more about that on the homepage and everything that is being done in that respect. Mongoose is actually one of the first embedded platforms that support AWS IOT and X509 across multiple architectures
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I fail to see how when C is part of the tooling.
jaboutboul 9y ago
Okay, so lots of comments on here and most of them are just plain wrong, FUD or stem from simple misunderstanding. Also, lots of people not groking the value proposition. Let me take a crack at clarifying some key points. So first off, the project is GPLv2 whether you use it for commercial or non-commercial use. The team's first language is not English, they are actually Russian and based out of Ireland, so there is bound to be some confusion. What they were basically trying to say with that, is if you need the extra features and the backend, etc. Those are not GPLv2 but the project itself is--no matter how you use it--is. I mentioned it to them team and they already corrected the site. Second, the value proposition behind this is tremendous. Remember the days before Unix and DOS/Windows ran on every machine in the world? Every machine had its own design, its own arch/cpu, its own OS, and its own interfaces. Computing was cool, but each machine was really an island. If you wanted to run your code on another machine then you had to port it over. Then Unix and CP/M-80/DOS came along and you could write something on one machine and it ran (almost) on anything with the same OS. Thats the name of the game here. This is groundbreaking for embedded/IOT development. Real embedded development is hard enough as it is. If you're doing a one off project for something in your home, then its pretty straightforward. Now try and take that to a mass production-scale product and the level of complexity is increased 50x. Imagine trying to bring a product to market, you need to pick a hardware platform/MCU to build with. Now imagine your suppliers hit a chip shortage and you can't use that chip, what do you? Sit back and wait for 6 months? What Mongoose OS allows you to do is write your code once and run it on multiple embedded platforms, you would just select another MCU, maybe make some minor modification to the pinouts, flash the firmware and BAM, you are back in business. Not to mention the fact that you have standard interfaces across all devices, MCUs, etc. It just makes development so much simpler. Not only that, but you now have to manage potentially hundreds of thousands of devices (or millions if your product is really successful). What do you? How do you handle firmware updates? How do you track status of all those devices? How do you do customer support without a debug interface, well the enterprise offering (or something like AWS IOT) will help you manage that process and make your life a whole lot easier. Now on the topic of why mJS vs. Python and a mix of C. You have to understand that embedded development is often EXTREMELY resource constrained. mJS fits into ~25K of flash space and less than 1K of RAM. This is awesome. It affords you the smallest possible functionality with the greatest possible flexibility. Write your logic in js and then call C for anything more critical/performance. I asked one of the team members and basically what he said was (I paraphrase) that mixing C with a scripting language is a pretty production ready solution. Obviously its preferable to write the critical pieces in C and then the higher level logic in the higher level language. It would be ideal if you could have type safety and compile-time checks in the high-level language. The ideal language to write logic in would be Go, and Go 2 promises to have a smaller runtime/footprint so hopefully one day that will be a possibility. In terms of everyone else talking about how the project is positioning itself, well let's just say that marketing is a work in progress ;)
anujdeshpande 9y ago
A recent tweet that I found funny - "Every time a conf organizer accepts a talk about #IoT using JavaScript ... somewhere in the world an IoT/embedded developer ... dies !"[1]. On a serious note though - Does anyone know a mass manufactured product (based on a uController) that actually uses anything other than C/C++? Rust is a strong contender too, surprised to not see it mentioned here. See an older discussion about Rust on ARM Cortex M[2] 1. https://twitter.com/ppatierno/status/894575063562936321 https://twitter.com/ppatierno/status/894575063562936321 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071282
- squarefoot 9y ago
  "On a serious note though - Does anyone know a mass manufactured product (based on a uController) that actually uses anything other than C/C++?" None that I know of, but ESP8266 and similar MCUs are so widespread that probably there are lots of products using say nodemcu (ESP+Lua scripting) under the hood. http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html Wifimcu is a similar product but uses a STM32F4 MCU. http://www.wifimcu.com/ http://www.wifimcu.com/ I would personally love to see more use of Nim in this field; it just seem the right tool for the job for being easy to learn, small, fast and powerful.
mkj 9y ago
"Better. Cheaper^. Faster" ^ Contact us for pricing

185 points by j4mie 9y ago

> FEATURED COMMUNITY PROJECTS > Door bell - ESP32, AWS IoT > Door sensor - ESP32, MC-38, AWS IoT/MQTT, SNS > Smart heater on AWS IoT > IoT doorbell that works via MQTT - generic MQTT server, AWS IoT, Google IoT, etc Why the hell would I want my door bell be controlled via MQTT on AWS?

pzduniak 9y ago
Probably to make use of their whole IoT platform, such as https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/ https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/. I still wouldn't use it over a properly architected local solution (being a software architect with focus on security), but if you _really_ don't want to write the non-feature-specific code then I suppose their stuff isn't that bad.
yetihehe 9y ago
To know when someone ring your doorbell but you are not in home so that you can connect through voip to speakerphone near doorbell and speak with someone who stands before your door. It's probably one of first examples, like "Hello World!". Who in their right mind would write hello world, they are written for all languages already.
StavrosK 9y ago
There's actually a very good use case if you have sleeping children: https://www.alittletothewright.com/index.php/2017/05/doorbell-smartener/ https://www.alittletothewright.com/index.php/2017/05/doorbel...
- swsieber 9y ago
  Indeed. We just bought a house and I'm excited to actually invest (in terms of electronic projects). Top thing on my list is to make the doorbell send a notification when our little one is sleeping, instead of sounding.
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    From experience you want to get them used to noise rather then keeping things quiet. With the first child, I made the mistake of hanging out of the window at 10PM trying to get the attention of the pizza guy so he didn't ring the door bell so we got to eat in peace. By the third child, you could set a firework off in the living room and she'd stay in bed. Be noisy! Be free!
planb 9y ago
It's not on AWS but runs on a local raspberry pi, but my doorbell signals via MQTT that someone ringed. This makes my security camera take a picture and sends a push notification to a custom made iOS app which shows who's in front of the door on my apple watch. If I'm logged in my home wifi, I can even open the door with a button directly from this notification. I would argue that I'm not the only one who finds that useful.
- GordonS 9y ago
  Is "signalizes" a word? Did you mean "signals"?
  - planb 9y ago
    Thanks, I've corrected it.
JigglyGigalo 9y ago
So that anything else that is connected to AWS can control your doorbell. Maybe the doorbell could have different sounds depending on what service (pizza, Amazon,friends) is on its way or just pulling up to the driveway right now. I think a smart doorbell is a great idea for a product.

robinduckett 9y ago

Bit of a confusing name, when there is already an extremely popular mongodb node.js framework called Mongoose

jordiburgos 9y ago
Not the first and not the last: spark(hadoop tool vs java framework), yarn (hadoop tool vs facebook pkg manager), ...
petepete 9y ago
Mongoose, not to be confused with Mongoose. https://metacpan.org/pod/Mongoose https://metacpan.org/pod/Mongoose
- ojosilva 9y ago
  This one is the best named of the 3. It's actually a simple contraction of Mongo + Moose, the two key libraries used in the project.
mijoharas 9y ago
Also confusing as there is a small mammal that eats snakes called mongoose.
- rena-anju 9y ago
  Also confusing when there is a vehicle in the Halo series called Mongoose. Confusing, confusing...
- tschellenbach 9y ago
  its quite a cool mammal :)
tomovo 9y ago
Also an embeddable http server.
- 9y ago

kierenj 9y ago

You had me until the "Pricing" section. The Old Way - Varies, depends on many factors. Requires ongoing investments, hiring developers or integrators The New Way - GPLv2 license: FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE / Commercial License: CONTACT US So with Mongoose OS, you don't have to invest, or hire developers? Am I being unfair by thinking that, while the other points make life easier, this is scraping the barrel a bit? Why not just say "and the price which gets you all of these advantages is.." ?

Spivak 9y ago
Are you annoyed that they're selling commercial exceptions to the GPL or that they're not listing the price on the page?
- asmithmd1 9y ago
  The latter. Just give me an idea of the order of magnitude of the price. Is a commercial license closer to $1000 or $100,000?

mijoharas 9y ago

> GPLv2 license: FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE This confuses me, the GPLv2 doesn't say anything about commercial use, it merely says that you need to redistribute the source code to anyone that you distribute your software to. Have they placed additional restrictions on the GPL (which I believe you are prohibited from doing)? or are they just trying to highlight that they are dual-licensing it under a license that isn't copyleft if you pay them (since lots of companies have no-gpl policies)?

jpfr 9y ago
GPL does not allow static binaries from both GPLed code and commercial code. A workaround is a plugin mechanism with dynamic loading of .dll or .so libraries. But that won't fly on a microcontroller.
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  .dll won't help with GPL, only with LGPL (IANAL)
  - yebyen 9y ago
    I think you have it backwards, if I am interpreting your very brief statement fully correctly... If you are building a library and you want it to be open source but also usable by products that are not open source, you can use LGPL. If you are building a proprietary library and you want to keep it proprietary, but link it into a GPL application, I think there is nothing is stopping you from doing that. You still have an open-source application, it just won't work without the proprietary library. (This sounds like it should be against the letter of the GPL, but as a thought experiment, pretend someone else wrote the library. Say, Nvidia, and you are Linus. You have no control over how their library gets licensed, and there is no person or body which can stop you from releasing your own code as GPL, even if it may have branches that depend on proprietary code.) Doing OSS this way is most certainly against the spirit of the GPL, but I think it is within the letter.
    - 9y ago

m-p-3 9y ago

Interesting, I'll have to look into it when I build some prototype (just a personal hobby-type of project) with my ESP8266.

grive 9y ago

> Prototyping and Scripting Engine > Micropython Moving to production (C/C++) or factoring out critical pieces to C/C++ is not trivial VS. > mJS - JavaScript engine for prototyping and C/C++ for production I don't know much about it, but from the surface it seems that the problem is exactly the same? What is the benefit of prototyping in JS instead of Python? In the end, either you refactor everything purely in C, or you use both in your production system. I see mJS does FFI to interface with other C routines. Why introduce a second language to your project? This seems like a huge overhead for no benefit (you're still expected to write C at some point). The language is only a subset of JS, so "not JS", so no ecosystem and new assumptions you have to redefine before getting serious with it? Is it just me who thinks it's a bad idea? Would someone be able to explain the advantage of going in this direction?

wiremine 9y ago
The advantage is time. Many (most?) embedded environments are overly difficult (IMHO), and/or proprietary. Also, even in a good environment, C/C++ typically requires more lines of code than dynamic languages like Python or JS. Therefore, the industry has been looking for ways to combat both the below par developer experience, and the development time. Samsung's Jerryscript [1] is another example. That said, I think these things are aspiration more than they are practical. [1] http://jerryscript.net/ http://jerryscript.net/ Note: Edited to clarify C++ vs. dynamic languages.
- grive 9y ago
  Sure, I think I see the reasoning behind: reduce the time to market for embedded products. But I'm mostly wondering the actualy benefit of choosing mJS instead of micropython to do so. It seems that both are capable of handling this problem, however mJS seems aiming at a compromise between JS and C, and my opinion on this is that it will introduce huge overheads on any projects. This mostly stems from my being wary of multi-language projects. The process involved in embedded platforms seems heavy enough as it is, no need to blur the lines further.
  - wiremine 9y ago

skratlo 9y ago

But why Javascript? Clearly another hype-driven project. Please, use reason not hype when deciding on technology. This is fast food

recursio 9y ago
Is it not reasonable that any Joe Schmo can easily build both front end UI's and servers with one of the most adopted languages?
- petecox 9y ago
  I'm reminded of earlier efforts using Firefox OS which sought to create a "Web of Things". I'd didn't get around to backing the Runcible project but watching Aubrey's video below, I hope it succeeds. http://janos.io/ http://janos.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgIObR6jGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgIObR6jGs http://mono.hm/ http://mono.hm/
drozd 9y ago
JS is for prototyping.
wishinghand 9y ago
C or Javascript is available.

daww 9y ago

Unfortunately the documentation is lacking and mJS (especially the ffi) is nowehere near production ready

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

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Dowwie 9y ago

"The old way: Micropython" <-- what? really? old, already? They're just getting warmed up, baby.

ageofwant 9y ago
Damn right. Mid level python dev in my team builds Django views on one screen and programs the embedded micropython board that sits on the drill in the pit on the other, all while cajoling with his millennial tribesman in the chat app du jour. Can't beat that.

j4mie 9y ago

If I wanted to make something that (say) reports sensor readings over MQTT to AWS IoT, what firmware options are there? NodeMCU looked great (Lua!) but doesn't seem to support X509 client certificates (which AWS needs). There's Arduino, Mongoose, Micropython - any others? What's the best way to go?

dankohn1 9y ago

If you're considering embedded OS options, please look at these two (completely free) projects from the Linux Foundation: Yocto project creates a custom embedded distro based on your needs https://www.yoctoproject.org/ https://www.yoctoproject.org/ Zephyr supports hardware that can't easily run Linux https://www.zephyrproject.org/ https://www.zephyrproject.org/

drozd 9y ago
Sure, try to run those on e.g. TI CC3200 microcontroller.
- sgt 9y ago
  Yocto does not seem to support CC3200.
  - drozd 9y ago
    That's right, cause Linux cannot run on the large class of microcontrollers - particularly, those with less than 4M of RAM. Mongoose OS is targeting that category.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - dankohn1 9y ago
      Zephyr is an open source OS that targets smaller microcontrollers.

hardwaresofton 9y ago

Does the world need another open source operating system for the internet of things? I wonder if creating a new one was really necessary or if they could have built on top of one that already exists. While I can't say I know intimately all the problems that need to be solved for IoT to responsibly reach mass consumption, but I'm pretty sure having an operating system wasn't the problem. Maybe this is just an enterprise cash grab?

jaboutboul 9y ago
It's definitely not a cash grab as the project is open source. There are many problems in this space that cannot be served using current solution, especially in environments that are super resource constrained. For example, this is made to run on a very small footprint of RAM, even smaller than what an embedded Linux distro would use.

monocasa 9y ago

I really fail to see what this brings to the table. In the section on their main page contrasting with arduino, they bascailly just say that they're more reliable, with nothing to really back that up. Looking at their documentation, I don't really see how they can make that claim. The issues with Arduino's reliability stems, IMO, from the fact that Arduino code isn't an RTOS. Ie. there's no separation of real time priorities. This also seems to not really be an RTOS either, just a fancy bare metal environment. What is this structurally bringing to the table beyond Arduino other than "we think we wrote the code better"?

Rebelgecko 9y ago
I'm thinking about using Mongoose for a future project (as opposed to Arduino IDE or the ESP SDK directly) I think the advantages are: Security: TLS 1.2, x509 certificates, ability to stop random people from flashing your board) Remote management: OTA process doesn't seem that different from other methods, but they have some other nice things. For example they make it really easy to separate your code from your configuration.
- monocasa 9y ago
  > ability to stop random people from flashing your board That part in particular seems like a really bold assumption.
  - Rebelgecko 9y ago
    I haven't read over their encryption code, but even if it's not enough to stop a determined hacker it's still better than nothing.

bschwindHN 9y ago

Why don't more people use FreeRTOS? I always find it to be a nice way to coordinate all the tasks you need to run in an embedded system, without having to manage a huge kernel like Linux. It's also free so there's that...

jaboutboul 9y ago
This is based off of freertos
- bschwindHN 9y ago
  Is it? I looked all over the site and don't see any mentions of "FreeRTOS", "RTOS", "real time", "tasks", or anything else that would indicate it's based off of FreeRTOS.

legulere 9y ago

Written in C so we can continue enjoying IoT devices being exploited by buffer overflows.

p4bl0 9y ago

It's sad that security isn't one of the homepage sell points of this OS. It feels like IoT is severly in need of serious "security by design". OS level would be a good start.

jaboutboul 9y ago
Security is actually one of the most important pieces of this puzzle and the team is one of the team's top priorities. Agreed it would be good to talk more about that on the homepage and everything that is being done in that respect. Mongoose is actually one of the first embedded platforms that support AWS IOT and X509 across multiple architectures
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I fail to see how when C is part of the tooling.

jaboutboul 9y ago

Okay, so lots of comments on here and most of them are just plain wrong, FUD or stem from simple misunderstanding. Also, lots of people not groking the value proposition. Let me take a crack at clarifying some key points. So first off, the project is GPLv2 whether you use it for commercial or non-commercial use. The team's first language is not English, they are actually Russian and based out of Ireland, so there is bound to be some confusion. What they were basically trying to say with that, is if you need the extra features and the backend, etc. Those are not GPLv2 but the project itself is--no matter how you use it--is. I mentioned it to them team and they already corrected the site. Second, the value proposition behind this is tremendous. Remember the days before Unix and DOS/Windows ran on every machine in the world? Every machine had its own design, its own arch/cpu, its own OS, and its own interfaces. Computing was cool, but each machine was really an island. If you wanted to run your code on another machine then you had to port it over. Then Unix and CP/M-80/DOS came along and you could write something on one machine and it ran (almost) on anything with the same OS. Thats the name of the game here. This is groundbreaking for embedded/IOT development. Real embedded development is hard enough as it is. If you're doing a one off project for something in your home, then its pretty straightforward. Now try and take that to a mass production-scale product and the level of complexity is increased 50x. Imagine trying to bring a product to market, you need to pick a hardware platform/MCU to build with. Now imagine your suppliers hit a chip shortage and you can't use that chip, what do you? Sit back and wait for 6 months? What Mongoose OS allows you to do is write your code once and run it on multiple embedded platforms, you would just select another MCU, maybe make some minor modification to the pinouts, flash the firmware and BAM, you are back in business. Not to mention the fact that you have standard interfaces across all devices, MCUs, etc. It just makes development so much simpler. Not only that, but you now have to manage potentially hundreds of thousands of devices (or millions if your product is really successful). What do you? How do you handle firmware updates? How do you track status of all those devices? How do you do customer support without a debug interface, well the enterprise offering (or something like AWS IOT) will help you manage that process and make your life a whole lot easier. Now on the topic of why mJS vs. Python and a mix of C. You have to understand that embedded development is often EXTREMELY resource constrained. mJS fits into ~25K of flash space and less than 1K of RAM. This is awesome. It affords you the smallest possible functionality with the greatest possible flexibility. Write your logic in js and then call C for anything more critical/performance. I asked one of the team members and basically what he said was (I paraphrase) that mixing C with a scripting language is a pretty production ready solution. Obviously its preferable to write the critical pieces in C and then the higher level logic in the higher level language. It would be ideal if you could have type safety and compile-time checks in the high-level language. The ideal language to write logic in would be Go, and Go 2 promises to have a smaller runtime/footprint so hopefully one day that will be a possibility. In terms of everyone else talking about how the project is positioning itself, well let's just say that marketing is a work in progress ;)

anujdeshpande 9y ago

A recent tweet that I found funny - "Every time a conf organizer accepts a talk about #IoT using JavaScript ... somewhere in the world an IoT/embedded developer ... dies !"[1]. On a serious note though - Does anyone know a mass manufactured product (based on a uController) that actually uses anything other than C/C++? Rust is a strong contender too, surprised to not see it mentioned here. See an older discussion about Rust on ARM Cortex M[2] 1. https://twitter.com/ppatierno/status/894575063562936321 https://twitter.com/ppatierno/status/894575063562936321 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071282

squarefoot 9y ago
"On a serious note though - Does anyone know a mass manufactured product (based on a uController) that actually uses anything other than C/C++?" None that I know of, but ESP8266 and similar MCUs are so widespread that probably there are lots of products using say nodemcu (ESP+Lua scripting) under the hood. http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html Wifimcu is a similar product but uses a STM32F4 MCU. http://www.wifimcu.com/ http://www.wifimcu.com/ I would personally love to see more use of Nim in this field; it just seem the right tool for the job for being easy to learn, small, fast and powerful.

mkj 9y ago

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