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Kaspar Lund of V8 and Dart fame and Toit.io have brought an IOT platform to market based around a purpose designed dynamic language with a bytecode VM optimize

Kaspar Lund of V8 and Dart fame and Toit.io have brought an IOT platform to market based around a purpose designed dynamic language with a bytecode VM optimized for use in MCUs. That VM engine is hosted in FreeRTOS which together with the VM and a deployment API provide a reliable and crash resistant platform for deploying apps to your IOT fleet. In their words "deploy a long-lived Toit application on your device, as if it was a mobile app being installed on your smart phone." (https://docs.toit.io https://docs.toit.io) The server end of their platform provides the management and app deployment infrastructure. It's claimed that the RTOS and VM environment makes deployment reliable even in the presence of failing apps. And that one app on a IOT device will not prevent other apps from running compromise management or brick the device. Toit.io, the company makes $$ by charging you .10/MB after the first 100MB/mo for use of their management and app deployment and you are left free to choose your own data platform. What I don't have feel for is what sort of utilization per device I can expect for the management and instrumentation traffic. *Edit I dug around the website and the tooling including the language looks like it is mostly closed source.

leoedin 5y ago
It's a really great concept, and the embedded world is crying out for more solutions like this. However, I'd be very, very hesitant to develop anything significant on this platform. At the very least I'd want to have a. the tooling to run unit tests / simulations of my programs on the PC before deploying and b. a clear migration path for if they went bust. Their value add is the infrastructure around deployment, so why is their language closed source? I really like the Balena.io approach - the whole platform is open, so if they do go bust you could run it yourself, but they provide real value in running the infrastructure - so it makes loads of sense to pay them.
twic 5y ago
So when Toit.io completes their incredible journey, rather than all their IoT devices being bricked, all their customers' IoT devices get bricked? Depending on what "management" entails, that is. It might only mean that no more updates are possible!

leoedin 5y ago

It's a really great concept, and the embedded world is crying out for more solutions like this. However, I'd be very, very hesitant to develop anything significant on this platform. At the very least I'd want to have a. the tooling to run unit tests / simulations of my programs on the PC before deploying and b. a clear migration path for if they went bust. Their value add is the infrastructure around deployment, so why is their language closed source? I really like the Balena.io approach - the whole platform is open, so if they do go bust you could run it yourself, but they provide real value in running the infrastructure - so it makes loads of sense to pay them.

twic 5y ago

So when Toit.io completes their incredible journey, rather than all their IoT devices being bricked, all their customers' IoT devices get bricked? Depending on what "management" entails, that is. It might only mean that no more updates are possible!